“The lie was one they - children, doctors, nurses - all encourage. The lie was that postponing death was life. That wicked lie had now imprisoned Francie in a solitude more absolute and perfect and terrifying than any prison cell.”

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

I have so many questions. What is Richard Flanagan trying to say here? What was with the colossal pivot about halfway through the book? Is it a book about dying? Or is it about Mental illness? Am I taking things more literally than is good for me? Perhaps the biggest question is, is Richard Flanagan okay?

One of the treats of living at the arse-end of the world and fancying myself as the rugged outdoorsy type (land and sea) is that I occasionally bump into Richard Flanagan. Now, he wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, but I have shared pleasantries on more than one occasion on some matter or another.

It's going to be very hard not to ask him what this book is all about the next time I bump into the bloke.

I recall most vividly the awful Tasmanian bushfires of 2006, 2013, 2016 and the terrible fires in January and October 2019. I also remember the trauma of the seemingly eternal fires blighting the big island above and share the frustration of the political class in this country to take the profound implications of climate change and the ongoing collapse of our ecosystems seriously, so I get it.

Yet... I find myself looking for metaphors that perhaps aren't there. I really should be content in my determination that it's a desperate and furious scream into the void and that I needn't fuss over deeper meaning.

In the damaged siblings denying the reality of the death of their mother, I felt on reasonably sure ground until body parts started disappearing. Not amputations, but 'vanishings', while the story keeps on chugging along (or veers off wildly into the scrub, to mix my metaphors).

Perhaps it's me, not you, Richard. I've always struggled with magical realism (although I loved Gould's Book of Fish. As you'd expect from the Booker winner, there's some lovely writing here, but the despair got me down, and the fragmented nature of the telling did not help.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2

Comments

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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