The narrative is carried along by stories of key family members via an omnipotent narrator (except for the rare lapse into first person).
Yet for their seemingly old-fashioned ways, they work hard to make their luck, unlike their landlords who seem content to wait for it, even if it takes a life time.
They have also faced incredible tragedy, including the near-drowning on their son, Fish. The Lambs are ‘Lambs of God’ (p 47), Christian farmers with a brood of six who have made some poor choices. Where the Pickles’ poverty is aggravated by the vices of booze and gambling, the Lamb family’s poverty is borne from something more naïve. Race day… Saturday evening they were poor again.” (pg 40-41). “We’re rich! Sam yelled from the letterbox. It is fate that sees them inherit Cloud Street and acquire the Lamb family as tenants, willing to pay rent for half a haunted house with one bathroom between twelve people. The Pickles’ household believes in the ‘shifty shadow’, and in luck and fate. It tells the tale of two rural families, the Lambs and Pickles, who find themselves sharing a huge weatherboard house in inner Perth (Cloud Street) in an attempt to escape dire post-depression poverty. I know, it’s Dante’s inferno for me – maybe there’s a special circle reserved for book thieves? Perhaps Mark Zusak knows? Luckily I’ve confessed all, and she forgives me because I now love this novel as much she does.Ĭloudstreet is a mystical, rambling novel that has helped shape Australian literary fiction since its publication in 1991. Years ago, when I was giddy with the invincibility of youth, I stole my sister’s copy of Cloudstreet. Cloud street: ( ′klau ̇ d ′ str ē t ) (meteorology) A line of cumuliform clouds frequently one cumulus element wide, but ranging upward in width so that it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between streets and bands.
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