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``Luck don't change, love,'' observes Sam Pickles to his daughter Rose. ``It moves.'' Considerations of fate and love underlie Winton's ( Shallows ) wry novel, set in Western Australia, about two families thrown together in the years following WW II. Sam Pickles earns a modest living mining guano for nitrate until he loses his hand in an accident. Fortunately, the family inherits a rambling old house--the Cloudstreet of the title--in which they can live, although they still lack cash. The dilemma is resolved with the sudden arrival of the rigid, God-fearing Lamb family, whom the rather libertine Pickles take in as boarders. Following the quirky, deeply etched members of these families--``flamin whackos,'' in Quick Lamb's description--as they forge bonds and undergo travails, Winton explores the haphazard nature of human existence with a quietly focused ferocity. Featuring lyrical passages and rapid-fire, minimally punctuated dialogue, this satiric, affectionate family saga is tragic and hilarious--and often both at once. Winton shows himself a worthy successor to his countryman Martin Boyd, who portrayed the Anglo-Australian society of previous generations. Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Australian Winton's fifth novel is chock-full, depicting birth, death, resurrection, marriage, miscarriage, gambling, drunkenness, adultery, anorexia, depression, love, and joy. From 1944 to 1964, the Pickles and Lamb families share a large house in a suburb of Perth on the wrong side of the tracks. The Pickles own the house and are slothful, he a gambler with long streaks of bad luck, she often drunk and adulterous. The tenant Lambs are hard-working. After the latter open a successful grocery on the first floor of the house, the families' lives become intertwined, and home and hearth become an anchor. World War II, Australian politics, the Cuban missle crisis, and Kennedy's assassination take a backseat to their trials and final joy. Biblical imagery, a talking pig, a house that cracks its knuckles, a son who glows in the dark, and a mysterious black ``guardian angel'' add spice to a book whose language resonates and charms. Highly recommended for most fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/92. Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Australian novelist Winton has written a strange and affecting novel about two families who share a decaying mansion of sorts at Number One Cloud Street in Perth, Australia. The brooding, notoriously unlucky Pickles family inherits the house but can ill afford to live in it. Trying to dodge the "shifty shadow of God," otherwise known as bad luck, father Sam comes up with a plan. He shoves his family into one-half of the house and rents the other half to the Lambs, who, though equally hapless, are full of pride and industry. Winton does wonders with this rather alarming group of down-and-outers on the make. His characters seem unformed yet quiveringly alive to every weird vibration the world puts out, ripe to bursting with all manner of mismatched properties and features. They seem to have risen--blinking and confused but willing and able--from some primordial, uniquely Australian ooze, where anything is possible and nothing is predictable. Winton consistently comes up with the perfect oddball moment and the ideal perspective. His novel fairly hums with the weird, mute currents that flow through and inform all humanity. (Reviewed Mar. 15, 1992)155597158XFrances Woods From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.