Book Thoughts: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Cloudstreet : A Novel by Tim Winton tells the story of two working-class Australian families, the Pickles and the Lambs. After tragedy strikes both families--Sam Pickle (the husband/father) loses several fingers in a working accident and Samuel "Fish" Lamb (the charming son) nearly drowns and returns from his baptism-gone-awry only half himself--the families, retreat to a house on Cloud Street.

At first, the families don't get along. The Lambs are hard-working, ethical, and overbearing in their rightness. The Pickles wait for good luck. But in the end, these two unlikely families become community and meaning to each other.

Most intriguing to me were the characters Oriel and Rose--a Lamb and a Pickle, who both take care of others and who both find comfort in control. Also Quick Lamb (Fish's brother), who enters into the suffering of the world and by doing so, redeems it, turning their suffering into dancing.

The house, haunted by ghosts and yet full of life, becomes the essence of Cloud Street and is known as Cloudstreet. It becomes life itself--this struggle to live and forget and remember, the struggle against the world and with the world, and the celebration of life.

Winton explores questions about life and faith: Is God good or is he more like a capricious Fate (the Shifting Shadow)? What does it mean to reject God's ways but still believe? Does personal tragedy mean that God isn't good? What is the essence of belief and in what forms do we find it? (I mentioned to someone that I seem to be drawn to books that can't give up Christianity but struggle with it nonetheless--I'm also reading Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.)

The Lambs can't believe any longer but can't stop trying either. They can't give up God. In some way, they are like Sam, who can't give up gambling. Sometimes he's followed by good luck, sometimes by bad, but he never stops. And though the habit is bad, he finds community in the people of the habit, and in the end, redemption in that community. Is belief in God a gamble? Or will it turn out to be something more substantial?

Winton also shows us the way of love--it is in action. It is in caring for another human being that you bring them into your life and serve them.

Each character enters into a personal spiritual journey that ends in the community. Winton affirms the place of family and community in the ultimate meaning of life. He also uses the supernatural--a haunted house, a communicating pig, a wandering Aborigine--not in a heavy-handed way but to show the unexplainable, the things in life that move us forward without us understanding.

Winton's writing shows the foibles and strengths of humanity. He surprises you with humor at times. It draws you into their lives.

Spoiler: The story is framed by the drowning of Fish--his final meeting with water that he craves from his first baptism, his fulfillment to become man again. And in the split second that he's fully man in the water before his death, he tells this story. In some unexplainable way, Fish saves the two families and fights off the ghosts that haunt them, just as the butter knife predicted Fish would be the one to save the war.

Psst--If you find this post interesting and think others might as well, would you mind taking a minute to stumble it? It would mean a lot to me.