   cloudstreet is a 1991 novel by australian writer tim winton. it chronicles the lives of two working class australian families who come to live together at one cloud street, in a suburb of perth, western australia, over a period of twenty years, 1943 - 1963. it was the recipient of a miles franklin award in 1992. a six-episode mini-series for television was subsequently developed and broadcast; however, significant discrepancies exist between it and the novel. as one of the most renowned pieces of australian literature, cloudstreet encompasses critical australian themes of family relationships, finding values within the stimuli of life, and being an aussie battler. winton said in 2007 that "cloudstreet was my way to express the importance of all the relationships i had throughout my life in western australia. as some of you may have picked up from the setting, i love water; the beach, the rivers and the lakes." ==plot summary== precipitated by separate personal tragedies, two families flee their rural livings to share a "great continent of a house", cloudstreet, in the perth suburb of west leederville. the two families are contrasts to each other; the lambs find meaning in industry and in godâs grace; the pickles, in luck. the lambsâ god is a maker of miracles; the picklesâ god is the âshifty shadowâ of fate. though initially resistant to each other, their search and journey for meaning in life concludes with the uniting of the two families with many characters citing this as the most important aspect of their lives. as a novel, cloudstreet has a circular structure, opening and ending with a shared celebratory family picnic - a joyous occasion which, ironically, is also the scene of fishâs long sought-after death or return to the water. the novel is narrated effectively by flashback "in the seconds it takes to die" by fish lamb, or the 'spiritual' omniscient fish lamb, free of his restricting retarded state. as such the novel gives a voice to social minorities, the australian working class and the disabled. (however, its treatment of fish lamb as somebody incomplete in his physical existence may also be interpreted as demeaning towards the intellectually disabled, depending on the reading 
1991_novels Miles_Franklin_Award_winning_works Novels_by_Tim_Winton Novels_set_in_Western_Australia