Tim Winton · 1991 · coming-of-age

Tim Winton's 1991 novel, twenty years in a single house. Two working-class families arrive in Perth from opposite ends of Western Australia after their own disasters, and share a big decaying place at Number One Cloud Street from 1943 to 1963 - one half God-fearing and industrious, the other half unlucky and drinking.

1. 1
   Geraldton

   Sam Pickles works an offshore island collecting guano until a winch takes his fingers - and then a will leaves him a house in Perth he cannot sell for twenty years, so the family goes south with nothing else.

2. 2
   Margaret River

   The Lambs are a farming family until Fish is pulled out of the water alive but not all the way back - and Oriel, who believed hard and was answered like that, packs them up and takes them north.

3. 3
   Cloud Street

   A sprawling weatherboard house on the wrong side of the tracks, a fence down the middle of the yard, two kitchens and a corridor that belongs to neither family - and a library room that will not let people alone.

4. 4
   The Swan River

   The river is the third character: Quick and Fish out in the boat at night with the prawns coming up, and the water that took Fish in the first place waiting patiently for him for twenty years.

5. 5
   Cloud Street

   A wedding, a murderer loose in Perth, a birth on the day he is caught, and Oriel coming in from the tent at last - and Fish going down to the water on a picnic day and getting, finally, all the way back.