Cloudstreet is a novel by Australian writer Tim Winton published in 1991. It chronicles the lives of two working-class families, the Pickles and the Lambs, who come to live together in a large house called Cloudstreet in Perth, Western Australia, over a period of twenty years, 1943 to 1963. The novel received several awards, including a Miles Franklin Award in 1992, and has been adapted into various forms, including a stage play and a television miniseries. In 2022, the novel was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Plot summary In 1943, precipitated by separate personal tragedies, two poor families, the Lambs and the Pickles, flee their rural homes to share a large house called Cloudstreet in Perth, Western Australia. The Pickles include the father, Sam, the mother, Dolly, and their three children, Ted, Rose, and Chub. The Lambs are led by father, Lester, and mother, Oriel, and they have six children, Hattie, Elaine, Mason (nicknamed "Quick"), Samson (nicknamed “Fish”), Red and Lon. The Pickles own Cloudstreet, but rent half of the house to the Lambs, who open a grocery store on the ground floor of the house. The two families contrast each other; the devoutly religious Lambs find meaning in hard work and God's grace, while the Pickles hope for good luck and do not share the Lambs' appetite for hard work. The novel focuses on the experiences and relationships of these two families over a period of 20 years. Major themes The novel is a celebration of community and people's search for connection with family, the past, and the environment in which they live. The novel also explores several Australian cultural myths, including the idealisation of the Aussie battler, the heroic figure of the ANZAC, rural and suburban identity, and the idea of Australia as "the lucky country". Peter Garrett also noted the importance of landscapes in the book: "he writes about the physicality of our landscapes and whether it's sort of, you know, railway cuttings, or bits of the desert, or the coast, or the estuaries where they go fishing occasionally, and he casts that landscape across the top of the lives that people are leading and their emotional landscapes are sort of contrasting against the landscapes of things they're doing at different times". Historical context Cloudstreet is framed by many key