Winton has a gift of combining reality with a dash of wild poetic fantasy and imagination. He has successfully used setting and structure, crucial factors in any prospective novel, by using a familiar location (Perth) as the main location of the story. This helps create a strong feeling of reality. Other popular places and historical events are also used, such as the "Nedland's Monster". The fact that a true historical event and a real person has been entwined with the fictional characters and storyline, foregrounds how Winton has deliberately tried to make the story seem more realistic. The language used by Winton when describing the Nedland's Monster is grim factual reality, delivered in almost poetic form. "He's inside. He's decided something. This isn't madness. He's thought about it. He knows what rape and murder mean. He's just come to like them." (pg 371) This quote enraptures the audience and has more of an overall impact on their feelings towards the story, by making them come to realisation of the horrors of such an event as the "Nedland's Monster.".
Sunday Telegraph comments on Cloudstreet as being "fragmented, hilarious,-. The sections/fragments of the story are written from different character's point of view. For example, the first two pages are from Fish's point of view, then it changes to Rose. The way that the novel has been structured is not that easy to understand and it may be a strain at first to give the reader a first good impression. However, although it may begin unsteadily, the story soon unfolds and the themes that are foregrounded; spirituality, the meaning of life, family, love and reconciliation between white and black Australia, support the novel's maverick originality. The way in which the novel has been written, I believe is deliberately inscrutable. It is tightly structured, opening and ending with the same shared family picnic near the water. The end has become the beginning.