Cloudstreet: A Novel (1991 original; edició 2013)

This is going to be one of my stand-out reads for the year. It's SUPERB!
Opening just after WW2, we meet two families who end up sharing a ramshackle and unlovely house - the Pickles - drunken floozy Dolly and her gambling husband . And their tenants- the driven Lambs- who, under the supervision of mother Oriel- open a successful grocery store.
And their children- anorexic Rose Pickles, the golden-child Fish Lamb, who suffers a brain-impairing accident in the first pages and will never be the same again- and his depressed brother Quick.
As twenty years roll by in Perth, as good and bad luck befall them, there is, too, a weird strand of magic realism running through a tale of everyday folk. And I'd say Winton carries it off- it just makes the saga SING.
Fabulous writing. ( )

I’m torn between two and three stars because on one hand I didn’t really contemplate dropping it unfinished which I usually do with my two-star books, but on the other hand in no universe could I say that I ‘liked’ it. I just didn’t actively hate it.

Overall, the reading experience felt like this:
↘This is weird, and also where are the quotation marks. ↗ Oh wow, it’s actually interesting. ↘ My god, I’m dying of boredom. ↗ Okay, it’s not that bad. ↘ God, someone kill me plz.

It was hard to connect to anyone or feel much during the whole story, except the anger at Sam’s gambling addiction (you have frikkin kids, you idiot, try thinking about someone but yourself) and also the incredible sadness of what happened to Fish. Every time he made an appearance on the page, there was a lump in my throat. The child purity of him, I don’t know. It got me every time. I think the only moment in the book that gave me actual joy was when Quick and Rose was going on vacation and decided to take Fish with them who wanted it so so much.

The magical realism which was surprisingly there too didn't help things one bit. I don't mind the concept in general (I did read 'One hundred years of solitude' six times) but in this book it just weirded me out. Was the house evil? Did the pig talk? Why were we in Fish's mind sometimes? Was it even his mind? What's up with all the hallucinations?

And reading the last (or rather next-to-last) scene felt like finishing the last episode of the TV Show ‘Lost’: I didn’t understand a thing but cried my eyes out.
What happened to Fish?? Did he die? Did they let him die? What? Why? What’s happening??
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Reread because it is such a good read. The human interest and the character definition is so well done. ( )

This is the first Tim Winton book I have read. Interesting to fascinating.
Quite a saga, I could have stopped reading several times, especially when I was tired.
Occasionally some descriptive passages stood out. "candle ... it's flame curtseying before the draughts".
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I thank heavens I didn't give up on this one, having started it a couple of years ago and let it drift onto some nominal pile of 'not sure why I've put this down' books. Last week it got its second chance when I took it to Berlin figuring it would either get read, or get left. In fact my nose was scarcely out of it.

It's a stunning achievement, Australian through and through, but utterly universal in its themes: at the risk of this being a spoiler, it is about the journey to understanding there is not us and them, only us. The book's 25 years old - there is probably a generation of people who could learn something for our time by reading it.

Rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/cloudstreet-by-tim-winton... ( )