![]() ![]() The novel is often extremely black farce, but that could be a reason for more serious naming. Rose Pickles: I suppose it’s a statement. There’s Fish Lamb and his brother Quick (because he’s slow), their sisters Elaine, Hat, and Red in comparison, the Pickles are treated mildly: they’re Dolly, Chub, and Ted, with sister Rose. And this is probably the place for me to mention my doubts about the characters’ names I don’t see why they need to be ludicrous. As Alex Miller says in his thoughtful introduction: Cloudstreet is the greatest Australian novel ever to have been written about the iconic and rapidly disappearing class of white Australians who gave the people of this continent its reputation as one of the finest and most generous-hearted on the planet. ‘Lamb and Pickles,’ guffaws Sam, ‘It’s gunna sound like a counter lunch.’ Since Tim Winton is writing it, that is presumably his intention. The two families come to live together in a vast rambling mansion in Perth which gives the book its title: it’s in Cloud Street. He is resuscitated, but too late his brain is damaged. ![]() ![]() The Lamb family, on the other hand, believed in God rather than luck, until their son Fish (short for Samsonfish, Samson being his given name) drowns while prawning in the river. He goes to work and loses his fingers in a winch: when he takes his glove off, they ‘fell to the deck and danced like half a pound of live prawns’. What do you do when you wake up in the morning and feel the shifty shadow of God lurking? You stay in bed, and hope that it’ll pass you by, that’s what. ![]()
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