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y separately published work icon Cloudstreet single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1991... 1991 Cloudstreet
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'From separate catastrophes two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch. For twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.' (Source: Publisher's website)

Exhibitions

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Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Cloudstreet Paige Gibbs , 1996 (Manuscript version)x400722 Z854113 1996 single work radio play

Paige Gibbs adapted Cloudstreet into a radio play in 1996 for ABC Radio National.

y separately published work icon Cloudstreet Nick Enright , Justin Monjo , 1998 Sydney Perth : Currency Press Company B Belvoir Black Swan Theatre Company , 1999 Z396116 1998 single work drama (taught in 2 units) Tim Winton's quintessential Australian yarn of the spirited child Fish, his family and unlikely neighbours - sharing determination, faith, pain, and laughter is a story of love and the bonds that tie us to our sense of place. Hailed as one of the most acclaimed theatrical events of the decade, it is a five hour epic. (Source: Libraries Australia)
form y separately published work icon Cloudstreet Tim Winton , Ellen Fontana , ( dir. Matt Saville ) Australia : Screentime Showtime , 2011 Z1582485 2011 series - publisher film/TV (taught in 1 units) 'The highly anticipated three part mini-series of the modern Australian classic novel. Set in and around Perth during the 40s and 50s, Cloudstreet tells the story of two rural families who suffer separate catastrophes and flee to the city to pick up the pieces of their lives and start again. Brought together in the same house at No.1 Cloud Street, the Lambs and the Pickles' share numerous tragedies and triumphs that draw them closer together, until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.' (Showtime website)
Cloudstreet : The Opera Cloudstreet! George Palmer (composer), Gale Edwards , 2016 single work musical theatre opera

Reading Australia

Reading Australia

This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.

Unit Suitable For

AC: Year 12 (English Unit 3)

Themes

Australian identity, belonging, community, faith, family, fate, fear, love, nostalgia, spirituality

General Capabilities

Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Intercultural understanding, Literacy, Personal and social

Notes

  • Selected in May 2003 by members of The Australian Society of Authors as their favourite Australian book.
    Selected in December 2004 by the Australian public in an ABC poll as Australia's fifth favourite book.

  • Adapted for the stage by Nick Enright and Justin Mojo in 1997.
  • Ranked #1 in ABC1's First Tuesday Book Club '10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die' 2012 voting ballot.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: McPhee Gribble , 1991 .
      image of person or book cover 7331810683589038226.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 426p.
      Reprinted: 1993
      ISBN: 0869142240, 0869143352 (pbk.)
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Picador ,
      1991 .
      image of person or book cover 4502043439927532996.jpg
      1991 Picador cover
      Extent: 426p.
      ISBN: 0330318284
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1992 .
      image of person or book cover 5128695671611634122.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 426p.
      Reprinted: 1998
      ISBN: 0140171193 (pbk.)
    • Saint Paul, Minnesota,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Graywolf Press ,
      1992 .
      image of person or book cover 6620398889922030557.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 426p.
      ISBN: 155597158X
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Viking , 1996 .
      image of person or book cover 3824534049500743053.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 426p.
      Reprinted: 1998 , 2004
      ISBN: 0670869260
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1998 .
      image of person or book cover 8808701686216718926.jpg
      Cloudstreet's 1998 Penguin cover
      Extent: 444p.
      ISBN: 9780140273984, 0140273980
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Simon and Schuster ,
      2002 .
      image of person or book cover 601318062791271480.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 426p.
      ISBN: 0743234413
    • Camberwell, Camberwell - Kew area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2011 .
      image of person or book cover 1668477743514275269.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 588p.
      Edition info: Television mini-series tie-in.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date: 28 March 2011.
      ISBN: 9780143205821 (pbk.)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2012 .
      image of person or book cover 5322526025330797285.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 480p.
      Edition info: 21st anniversary edition
      ISBN: 9781926428451 (hbk.)
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Picador ,
      2013 .
      image of person or book cover 6578654237888864096.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 480p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 16 November 2013
      ISBN: 9781250035516 (pbk.)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2014 .
      image of person or book cover 4621978355401152893.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 576p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 19 November 2014
      ISBN: 9780143569725
Alternative title: Cloudstreet : kroniek van twee families
Language: Dutch
    • Amsterdam,
      c
      Netherlands,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Amber ,
      1992 .
      image of person or book cover 3995902107287891957.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 395p.

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

Parochial Canons : Teaching Australian Literature in Western Australia Claire Jones , Patricia Dowsett , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , 10 August vol. 23 no. 1 2023;

'In recent years, various studies have drawn attention to a lack of Australian literature being taught in secondary classrooms in Australia, with these findings often attributed to teachers’ minimal experience of Australian texts during their senior secondary and tertiary education. This paper draws on a state-wide study of texts studied in Year 12 English and Literature classrooms in Western Australia in 2018, which revealed that Australian works, and particularly Western Australian texts, were popular inclusions for study. The externally examined English course in WA not having a prescribed text list, yet this condition of text list expansion does not necessarily ensure that a wider variety of texts will be studied in schools. This paper explores some possible explanations for this situation by referring to sites of sociability and to the work of John Guillory on canonicity and cultural capital (1993), to consider the impact of a parochial canon on Western Australian English subjects.' (Publication abstract)

Tim Winton’s Pneumatic Materialism Arthur A. Rose , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , vol. 22 no. 5 2020; (p. 641-656)

'The somatic effects of empire can be found in Tim Winton’s “pneumatic materialism”, an aesthetic preoccupation in his novels with moments of anoxia, or the deprivation of oxygen to the brain. This essay will consider how Winton's novel engage with pneumatic materialism in response to questions of uneven development traditionally associated with the Global South, thereby disrupting clear South–North distinctions. By blurring his concerns across the North–South divide, Winton shows a willingness to think of empire as a series of relations that are not bound by national or territorial borders so much as by substances in the air. He does this, I argue, in his use of the breath.' (Publication abstract)

Contemporary Loss : The Process of Personal Sfumato Frank Crennan , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , April no. 68 2020; (p. 149-158)
'One of the most popular Irish broadcasters and writers of modern times was Nuala O'Faolain. Abruptly, in the middle of an engaged and full life, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Later, when dying, Nuala was interviewed on Raidio Teilifis Eireann, the equivalent of our ABC. Perhaps because of her fame and the popularity of this particular show, the broadcast became a national sensation. It was as if the whole of Ireland listened to this most intense end-of-life conversation, delivered not privately, at a bedside, but into the national ear. There was lightness and laughter, but there was also despair, openness and tearful honesty.' (Introduction)
Tim Winton and the Ethics of the Neighbour Here and Now Peter D. Mathews , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 55 no. 5 2019; (p. 642-655)

'This article explores the ethical concept of the neighbour, an idea central to the fiction of Tim Winton. The first part focuses on how the ghosts in Cloudstreet symbolize an Australian culture haunted by the injustices of colonization, especially the dispossession of the Indigenous people. The second part looks at the paradox of being commanded to love one’s neighbour, comparing an early story, “Neighbours”, to Winton’s recent novel Eyrie. The third part looks at Winton’s ethics of neighbourliness in light of recent critical reworkings of this concept by Slavoj Žižek and Kenneth Reinhard. Central to this section is the importance of time and place to the ethics of the neighbour, in particular the repeated insistence by both Winton and his critics that, rather than focusing on the past, we should acknowledge the neighbour who stands before us in the here and now.'  (Introduction)

‘A Place with Its Own Shying’ : Countering the Aboriginal Uncanny in Vivienne Cleven’s Her Sister’s Eye Suzette Mayr , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;

'In their introduction to the book Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush recall the recurring nature of the ‘Indian burial ground’ (vii) cliché in popular culture. As Boyd and Thrush see it, the Aboriginal burial ground as the rationale for a piece of land being uncanny or haunted has become ‘a tried-and-true element of the cultural industry’ (vii). Boyd and Thrush argue that possessed, sacred Aboriginal territory or the ‘Indian uncanny’ (ix) remains one of the most common explanations for the supernatural attributes of a house or other physical site in texts produced in ‘settler colonies’ (Ashcroft 133) such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, ‘[w]hether . . . the haunted house down the dirt lane, the spectral woods behind the subdivision or the seemingly cursed stretch of highway up the canyon’ (Boyd vii).' (Introduction)

Cloudstreet Alan Mathews , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Tamba , Winter no. 2 1992; (p. 9-10)

— Review of Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel
On My Bedside Table Kate Cherry , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 7 February 2009; (p. 28)

— Review of Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel
Local Classics Belle Taylor , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 12 September 2009; (p. 12)

— Review of Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel ; Sixty Lights Gail Jones , 2004 single work novel ; Gilgamesh : A Novel Joan London , 2001 single work novel ; The Shark Net : Memories and Murder Robert Drewe , 2000 single work autobiography ; A Fortunate Life A. B. Facey , 1980 single work autobiography ; The Well Elizabeth Jolley , 1986 single work novel ; The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea Randolph Stow , 1965 single work novel
Winton's Enduring Crowd Pleaser Brenda Walker , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21-22 May 2011; (p. 18-19)

— Review of Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel
Review of the TV tie-in edition.
[Review] Cloudstreet Marlene Dullard , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 20 no. 1 2006; (p. 54)

— Review of Cloudstreet Tim Winton , 1991 single work novel
y separately published work icon Tim Winton : The Writer and His Work Michael McGirr , South Yarra : Macmillan Education Australia , 1999 Z1022919 1999 single work criticism Aimed principally at younger readers and students, this work contains biographical information about Winton which situates him in a Western Australian context and has chapters dealing with each of Winton's novels to date. Each chapter concludes with a section 'Questions and Activities'.
Woven in Spirit of Winton Leah de Forest , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: Canberra Sunday Times , 13 April 2003; (p. 22)
Winton First Among Peers 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 27 May 2003; (p. 3)
Tim Winton's 'New Tribalism' : Cloudstreet and Community Stuart Murray , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 25 no. 1 2003; (p. 83-91) The AustLit Anthology of Criticism 2010; (p. 72)

'The consolidation of the myths produced by Gallipoli suffused much of Australian public culture in the decades following the end of the First World War, producing models of masculinity, community and nationhood that became inscribed as cultural norms. It is these very norms that Winton's notion of the potential "new tribalism" of Australian community seeks to disrupt, especially by way of Cloudstreet's representation of family.' (Source: Article.)

Writing of Australian Dwelling : Animate Houses and Anxious Ground David Crouch , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 80 2004; (p. 43-52, notes 235-236)
Last amended 13 Dec 2023 09:21:09
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