Rating: 
Summary: Like getting to know an arm of your family
Review: An epic journey of life shared with two bustling families that stays with you long after. Even now, some five months after listening to the book on audio, I still hear the charachters in my head and smile to myself. An engrossing tale to curl up and get into - highly reccomended to anyone who enjoys the trials of family and relationships.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully evocative book about Aust. spiritual evolution.
Review: Cloudstreet assumes the classification of a sequential novel and concerns the lives of two importantly different Australian families. On a deeper level however Cloudstreet is an Australian adaption of the universal motif of spiritual evolution. Tim Winton's considerable achievement is to create a narrative depth which not only intimately pilgrimages the journey of Fish but also avails a deeper esoteric view of life events. Evocative and memorable, Cloudstreet will become an Australian classic.
Rating:
Summary: Just the best
Review: I award this book 9 points instead of 10 because of my faith that someone who could write a book this perfect may yet produce one even better.
Having said that, its hard to imagine a better book. In my view Tim Winton is the greatest living Australian writer and this is his best, most moving work so far. His genius is to produce something as accessible as a soap opera and yet as powerful a work of art as any of the great classics of world literature.
Am I too effusive in my praise? Read it and find out.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: I could not put this book down if I had wanted. The complete Australian atmosphere mesmerized me ... or was it Mr. Winton's unique style of writing? He certainly has a way of capturing a scene in every sentence. This was, perhaps, the closest one can come to experience humanity through a novel. The ordinary lives of humans captured in the normal unexpected events that occur in one's own life. The tragic fragility of what we experience as life can be summed up in the story of Fish. I would recommend this book to high school teachers everywhere. Additionally, I am left wondering how this book could have been missed by the individuals who decide the Booker Prize and its' shortlist
Rating: 
Summary: Hate to be the only one, but...
Review: I enjoyed the first 200 pages of this 426 page book and bits and pieces of the other 226, but overall it was way too long. I really didn't like the unrealistic parts, didn't "get" them at all. What was the business about the "black bloke?" How about Quick "glowing?" What was that? I hated those long-sentence paragraphs inspired by James Joyce, perhaps, show-offy and meaningless. And Fish...well, he drowned once then lived only to drown again. Ho hum. I recommend Winton's "Dirt Music." Now there was a book that knew what it was about.
Rating:
Summary: You might have to be an Aussie for this one...
Review: I LOVED this book, don't get me wrong - however, some parts are hard to understand, and at times, digest.
With strong, animated and very loveable characters (all in their own way), Tim Winton makes you feel like a part of Cloudstreet. With profound statements such as: "Loving a man was a very silly activity; it was giving to the weak and greedy and making trouble for yourself.", as well as, "The strong are here to look after the weak, and the weak are here to teach the strong.", you give your heart to this book. As Tim Winton said, "Didn't it take half your sense away and all your breath?". It will make you laugh, it will make you long and in the end I guarantee you will miss these families.
Rating:
Summary: The great Australian novel?
Review: If there was a competition for the greatest Australian novel of the Twentieth Century, Cloudstreet would be in the running for the top prize. It is an indictment of the American publishing industry that it appears to be out of print. Although Winton was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his later book, The Riders, Cloudstreet is the one that should have won it. Happily, the dramatization of Cloudstreet has endeared it to a new audience, but it it still worth saying: Wake up world, this is a classic novel.
Rating:
Summary: Crowded House
Review: In this decades spanning meditation on luck and fate, two families who share a rambling house discover the ties that bind. Winton writes in a slang-filled idiom that captures the resilience of Australians, their uncanny ability to dust themselves off and spit in the face of misfortune. The Lambs lose a son to retardation, Dolly Pickles loses her looks to time and the bottle, and her husband, reduced to five good fingers, loses over and over at the track. Somehow they endure. The younger generation, represented by the memorable Rose Pickles and Quick Lamb, fly from a messy nest only to feel the undeniable pull of the familiar and family. Winton's survivors win your heart and his evocation of Perth, surrounded by sea and sand, takes you to a town on the edge of the earth. Fair dinkum.
Rating:
Summary: Crowded House
Review: In this decades spanning meditation on luck and fate, two families who share a rambling house discover the ties that bind. Winton writes in a slang-filled idiom that captures the resilience of Australians, their uncanny ability to dust themselves off and spit in the face of misfortune. The Lambs lose a son to retardation, Dolly Pickles loses her looks to time and the bottle, and her husband, reduced to five good fingers, loses over and over at the track. Somehow they endure. The younger generation, represented by the memorable Rose Pickles and Quick Lamb, fly from a messy nest only to feel the undeniable pull of the familiar and family. Winton's survivors win your heart and his evocation of Perth, surrounded by sea and sand, takes you to a town on the edge of the earth. Fair dinkum.
Rating:
Summary: Sad . . .
Review: It is sad to see this book is out of print. I still have a hardback copy on my shelf. Since first reading the book -- the first time I read it I had actually checked it out of the library -- I have obtained three copies at my favorite used bookstore, giving away two copies to friends. Maybe it was because Tim Winton was not a household name even among readers or maybe it was because "Cloudstreet" did not appear in Harold Bloom's list of canonical books (and I felt it should have been), but there is no other work of fiction I've felt strong enough about to get three copies to give away two -- that I felt needed to be read and read by as many people as possible. A marvelous allegory, a great work of fantasy with so much of the gritty details of the mundane world you forget how unlikely these two families are that live in the house on Cloudstreet. The Pickles and The Lambs, the two sides of a spiritual person. The Lambs: moral, charitable, and hardworking, but without any faith. On the other end, Sam Pickle, a drunkard and gambler, but a man who knows about what it means to live in the shadow of God: that some days you cannot lose, and other days . . . to get out of bed is asking for trouble. And then there is Fish Lamb who half comes back from his watery grave, the other half living in the world of the spirit watching over the people he loves and telling us their story. I cannot say too much . . . this is a book that needs to be read and then it needs to be contemplated with the sense of wonder it evokes.
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