Tim Winton

History. Yes that was when history started on me. The day after the dog was taken, the day Jackson found Ronnie half crazed down by the river. If only we hadn’t had so many things to hide, so many opportunities for fear to get us. You can keep it all firm and tidy in you for a time, but Gawd Almighty when the continents begin to shift in you, you can’t tell tomorrow from yesterday. You run just like that herd of pigs over the cliff and into the water. - Stubbs.

Reading this short excerpt show more from Winton’s short novel one could reasonably expect it to be a book of suspense. It is, and it’s not. There’s a suspense hiding there, but it’s more a novel of four people, secrets, and the Australian bush

Tim Winton is known in Australia for his prose, and it was for his prose - about the Australians and the Australian bush that I delighted in while reading this book.

It is indeed very Aussie. Set in a valley the locals call The Sink, Winton tells us of the lives of four people. There’s Stubbs and Ida, almost stereotypical outback Australians, and two blow-ins, Jacob and Ronnie, who have come to The Sink separately. The book is told in the outward and inner voices of these four disparate Sink residents.

Here is Stubbs again, talking to himself about his wife of 30 years.

We’d spend some time together me and Ida. The children had grown and gone, and over the years Ida had fattened up. She sort of spread out like a garden gone wild. I think she was richer, better for the years. She developed a big wide laugh and her memory was gentle. She wanted the best for people, to think the best of them. She gave me the benefit of any doubt and she had a few, because looking back on it I see I’d grown grown in, gotten smaller, meaner with age. But she stayed even so, though sometimes I wonder why.

Stubs and Ida are farmers of the old-school. Ronnie (Veronica) is a 20 year old drug user who had high hopes of having a farm with her boyfriend - a pop-star wanna-be. He’s dumped Ronnie to find fame and fortune, leaving her to look after a goat, a cow, several Muscovy ducks, and a spinning wheel which stands unused in the run-down house they rented.

Jacob is a city man. He’s rented the best house in The Sink. He is recently divorced and has started to read books for the first time in his life. Books from his ex-wife’s collection, that he somehow ended up with after their less than amicable divorce. Apart from his disturbing memory of his two month old daughter asleep in a cradle with the family cat, all we really know about Jacob is that he’s monied and is a nice enough bloke.

The four are drawn together because of a strange happening - several animals are killed over two nights and it’s not obvious why. As the four lives interact from necessity - they all need to know why the animals have died The trauma of the needles deaths affect each and we learn about traumas of their past lives.

There’s a commonality in their pasts and these are gradually revealed as the four search for the animal killer. But Winton is sparse in his prose here and we are given small snippets - handed to us almost grudgingly through the individual character’s inner thoughts.

The bush is both loved and feared by Australians. It’s ugliness is its beauty and there’s no better living writer who can bring our bush to life.

Reccomended show less

Wow. Just wow. This is tim Winton at his finest. I have just finished this and I’m still processing. In short, an abused teenager, Jaxie, comes home to find his father dead (this isn’t a spoiler, it happens within the first couple of chapters). He then takes off into the bush and comes across an isolated older man.

As in all tim winton’s books, the landscape of Western Australia is a character in its own right. Harsh, brutal but luminescent, the desolation and loneliness underpins the show more book. Apart from the landscape there are only two major characters, jaxie and the older man, who I don’t want to give too much detail about (spoilers sweetie!) however tim Winton develops them brilliantly, showing Jaxie’s development and growth from a neglected, abused and angry teen into someone who wrestles with doing the right thing and loyalty and family, when he hasn’t had an example of this in his home life. He also explores growing older and regrets and paying for our past sins, and the way this plays on our minds obsessively.

As in all good literature, this book questions what does it mean to be human? What do we want in life? And how do we cope when what we want doesn’t eventuate? When life and circumstances throw a spanner in the works? What is truly important to us as humans?

At times brutal, heartbreaking, tender and humourous, sometimes all at once, the minutia of survival under the odds, whether physical or emotional, is stripped down to the bones. I hope it works out well for jaxie, and he finds what he is looking for. show less

I am going to digress a bit on this one as I just read that it is being criticised for the main characters being only male and the ngative way the few women characters are portrayed. I am aware of the Me Too movement but I am stunned when I read someone telling an author either how they should have written their or how their book fails because it doesn’t contain certain items from an agenda. I have also read how white people cannot write authentically about black people, men about women show more and so on.

Jesus Christ! it is fiction for fuck sake. It is not real! It requires an imagination not a fucking checklist of permissible characters. Grow up and write your own book to show all us dumb fucks how it should be done. I dare you!

Now to this very fine book.

One of the things I love about Tim Winton’s writing is how he brings the country and its people alive. I am in Oz right now as I write this and unless you have been here it is very hard to describe the immenseness, dryness and specificness of this country. There is no shortage of bad people here and a lot of space to bury bodies. His combination of bad people and huge dry open spaces is put together so skilfully I am looking out for these people as I drive along. Any ute with a good covering a red dust surely is driven by a psychopath who has just buried a few in the outback.

This is a fraught narrative, more a stream of semi-consciousness than a well told tale. A meeting of opposites in a place that just wants people to die.

Last time I was here the police were digging up an area where a man had buried a dozen or more hitchhikers before he died and then his nephew took over the “family business” and buried eight or nine more. Meanwhile just down the road the police were trying to catch a father and son who had been on the run for around three and a half years obviously getting aided by people as they are chased across the state. It’s that kind of country and it takes a massive talent to get even close to capturing the essence of this place. Thank you Mr Winton show less

I don't know where to begin this review. I finished reading Cloudstreet a few weeks ago and have been trying to find the words to communicate just how much I loved this Australian novel by Tim Winton.

Oddly enough, if it weren't for the TV series, I wouldn't have read Cloudstreet at all. A few years ago there was a radio segment where an announcer read sections of Cloudstreet to listeners to the sounds of seagulls etc. it was amusing but put me off ever picking up this novel for myself.

I was show more then moved to tears by watching the TV series Cloudstreet which motivated me to read the novel and I'm extremely glad I did.

The writing was uniquely Australian and the characters deftly drawn. My favourite character was Fish, and I was astonished at Winton's ability to create such a complex and loveable character; it was sheer brilliance!!

Cloudstreet is now one of my favourite books and is competing for the place of favourite Australian novel. For anyone who is contemplating reading this novel, I beg you to do so. The writing is accessible and the pages just fly along so don't be intimidated by the size. Tim Winton's Cloudstreet will stay with me forever and I'm excited to read more books from this incredible writer in the future.

Outstanding!! show less