This Australian book's action takes place between 1943, towards the end of WW2 up to the mid-1960s.
The central issue of cloudstreet [spelled in lowercase] is a literary examination of the formation and continuance of family and identity. Without the 'we' of one's family, the 'I' cannot exist authentically.
Cloudstreet is a double-storey house in poor repair at No. 1, Cloud Street in a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. It becomes home to two working-class families in needing repair: the house owners, the Pickles (Sam and Dolly: Rose, Ted and Chub) believe in luck and get mainly the bad; and the tenants, the Lambs (Lester and Oriel: the girls, Hattie, Elaine, Red and the boys, Quick, Fish, and Lon) who once believed in God but have lost faith in him, and now rest on the spin of a kitchen knife ('the knife never lies').
Many occurrences weigh in against each of the two families. Sam Pickles loses four of his fingers on his right hand, his working hand and loses his job. Just at that time, Dolly Pickles' brother drops death fishing with Sam and his will gives a house to the Pickles on condition that it not be sold for 20 years. The benefactor is well aware that Sam will gamble away anything he is given and this caveat at least protects Dolly and the children from losing their shelter. Sam lives according to a feeling about the closeness of the 'shifty shadow' which he blames for all his bad luck at the horses and elsewhere.
The Lambs have their faith in a miracle-working God shattered by the death of Fish Lamb by drowning who is restored to life by the prayers and actions of his mother Oriel only to be found mentally retarded as a result 'because not all of Fish Lamb had come back' (p.32).
All the women in this narrative rule the roost. The men are soft, lovable, compassionate but ineffectual (Lester, Sam, Quick, Fish in particular) while the women are hard-nosed, dictatorial and willful to varying degrees (Oriel, Dolly, Rose).
Dolly, 'a damn goodlooking woman' (p. 15), does her best to destroy her marriage by sleeping with other men but Sam excuses her. We learn later that her promiscuity signals her deep despair with life related to her tragic upbringing. The same can also be said for Oriel who works and works to forget her past.
For those believing that life is a rational if puzzling phenomenon Winton gives us a talking pig, one that 'speaks in tongues' and a house that groans, murmurs and sighs along with the battles and tribulations of the folk within. These are further examples of the inexplicable. Houses cannot 'speak' and a pig likewise doesn't chat but in cloudstreet both things occur. Any kind of bland secularism is challenged by this book's credible and incredible events.
And yet, in the middle of life's inexplicability, the desire for the bonds of family life within the Cloudstreet families becomes paramount. Winton seems almost nostalgic for this earlier time when kith and kin counted for everything.
And his personal Christian faith? His book reveals the glory of God in the midst of disappointment, pain, suffering, poverty but redemptive healing visits major characters too through surprising new relationships and family connections.
His strongest image of the river is introduced by the epigrammatic form, 'Shall we gather at the river/ Where bright angel-feet have trod . . .' and much of the pain and healing comes in relation to the river (of God).
Highly recommended. (I have started reading it again, a thing I rarely do with novels.)
Comments