“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