Book me 5/20 - Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

As recommended by miwahni - and by The Independent, which calls it "A generous watery epic", and it is, and it's just wonderful! It's a story that sings, and seeps through your veins, and I shall have to look up more of Mr Winton!

I have to admit that if I'd picked this up in the shop I'd probably have put it down again as likely-to-be-pretentiousness, because the author plays fast and loose with his punctuation - no speechmarks, none at all - but in this case I'd've been very very wrong, because he knows why he's done it, and it's to make the tune rollick and rise and hum along in all the right places, and he knows how to do that! Yeay! It's a feeling of a book. Look - this is how it starts:

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

Twenty years, they all say, sprawling and drinking. There's ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea. There's pasties, a ham, chickenlegs and a basket of oranges, potato salad and dried figs. There are things spilling from jars and bags.

The speech is silenced by a melodious belch which gets big applause. Someone blurts on a baby's belly and a song strikes up. Unless you knew, you'd think they were a whole group, an earthly vision. Because, look, even the missing are there, the gone and taken are with them in the shade pools of the peppermints by the beautiful, the beautiful the river. And even now, one of the here is leaving.

He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life...

How gorgeous is that! But it's not all like that, because it's all the way down to earth as well, and it's impossible not to read it in an Aussie accent, and to feel the country all around you... Definitely recommended for a taste of Australia, and for a taste of some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read.

Thanks, miwahni! *g*

Book me 5/20 - Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

As recommended by miwahni - and by The Independent, which calls it "A generous watery epic", and it is, and it's just wonderful! It's a story that sings, and seeps through your veins, and I shall have to look up more of Mr Winton!

I have to admit that if I'd picked this up in the shop I'd probably have put it down again as likely-to-be-pretentiousness, because the author plays fast and loose with his punctuation - no speechmarks, none at all - but in this case I'd've been very very wrong, because he knows why he's done it, and it's to make the tune rollick and rise and hum along in all the right places, and he knows how to do that! Yeay! It's a feeling of a book. Look - this is how it starts:

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

Twenty years, they all say, sprawling and drinking. There's ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea. There's pasties, a ham, chickenlegs and a basket of oranges, potato salad and dried figs. There are things spilling from jars and bags.

The speech is silenced by a melodious belch which gets big applause. Someone blurts on a baby's belly and a song strikes up. Unless you knew, you'd think they were a whole group, an earthly vision. Because, look, even the missing are there, the gone and taken are with them in the shade pools of the peppermints by the beautiful, the beautiful the river. And even now, one of the here is leaving.

He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life...

How gorgeous is that! But it's not all like that, because it's all the way down to earth as well, and it's impossible not to read it in an Aussie accent, and to feel the country all around you... Definitely recommended for a taste of Australia, and for a taste of some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read.

Thanks, miwahni! *g*