Huge Feed at Fort street Union

Tuxedo jacket and beetle

Super Mike

Finally got my new glasses! What a mission!!!

Tamsin whipping up a lamb roast

Yummy roast lamb with Tamsin

Book of the week: Cloudstreet

This book review is sponsored by 43 North Talbot Drive.  My Cloudstreet.

I have not read any Australian authors, and after reading this book I realize how tragic that is.  Tim Winton should be lauded with the likes of Steinbeck and Carson McCullers for his incredible ability to interweave incredibly complex plots in a way that makes you long for a connection.

Cloudstreet follows the lives of two families, the Pickles and the Lambs, over a period of ten years.  The Pickles are prone to gambling and drinking while the Lambs are an impoverished family looking to make right in the world by being god-fearing, hard workers.

They come to inhabit Cloudstreet together and divide the house in half.  The Lambs need the Pickles for somewhere to live, and the Pickles need the Lambs because the father, Sam Pickles, gambles away most of the money he makes and the mother, Dolly Pickles drinks the rest of it.  But Cloudstreet is no ordinary house, it's not haunted in a Henry James kind of way, but it breathes in and out, it absorbs the families, it protects them, it haunts them.

This book is a narrative on what it takes for a family to stick together, for no matter how hard things are or how screwed up we become, family sticks together, and sometimes you find the family you need in the places you least expect to find them.

I give this book 4.5 out of 5.  It is one of those books that as you read, the plot and the characters stick in your brain, and when you finally finish the book you are actually sad that you will not be in their lives anymore.

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Sneaky snears at shaky isles

New Zealand suburbs, Jess's House

Front door, rainy city action.

Big Apple Red. *swoon

Mike insisted this would taste like vanilla frosting and licorice...lies! All lies!!