Cloudstreet is an elaborate epic poem with the grand interwoven themes: death, life and the life hereafter; love, tragedy, evil, grace, God, luck, time and times, the extraordinary, chance, water and sky. 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 no...
we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen --Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles