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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
Sigh. Some books just hit you, you know? Gould’s Book of Fish is one of them. Exquisitely horrifying and beautiful. It’s far too complex a tome to be characterised in just a few sentences, but what it says about identity, cultural, personal and historical, is powerful. And it’s not often, just quietly, that I get to the epilogue and it smacks me in the face with the completely unexpected, but now ridiculously obvious. You should read this. Really. I’m sorry it took me so long to do so myself.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is a tragicomic, grotesque, fantasmagoric story of a convict in an early 19th century prison colony on Sarah Island in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). It's an effective approach for showing the horror of the genocide of the native population, the rape of the land, and the lunacy of Rabelaisian-like British characters untethered from the (relative) sanity of their home society, without making readers want to kill themselves after reading it.
If I saw this description before reading the book, I'd never have picked it up, but I'm glad I did. What kept me reading was the genius of the writing. It's hard to pick one sample, but here's one that speaks to the nature of the book itself:
Because, you see, it sometimes seems so elusive, this book, a series of veils, each of which must be lifted and parted to reveal only another of its kind, to arrive finally at emptiness, a lack of words, at the sound of the sea, of the great Indian Ocean through which I see in my mind's eye Gould now advancing towards Sarah Island, now receding; that sound, that sight, slowly pulsing in and out, in and out.
.
If I saw this description before reading the book, I'd never have picked it up, but I'm glad I did. What kept me reading was the genius of the writing. It's hard to pick one sample, but here's one that speaks to the nature of the book itself:
Because, you see, it sometimes seems so elusive, this book, a series of veils, each of which must be lifted and parted to reveal only another of its kind, to arrive finally at emptiness, a lack of words, at the sound of the sea, of the great Indian Ocean through which I see in my mind's eye Gould now advancing towards Sarah Island, now receding; that sound, that sight, slowly pulsing in and out, in and out.
.
That I couldn't find another star or two for Gould's Book of Fish may be more my failing than the book's because it likely deserves them. Much of the story's secrets seem to be endemic to the headspaces of its two authors - the putative creator, William Buelow Gould, and the dust jacket one, Richard Flanagan - and anyone else trying to snatch more than morsels of sense from the dense and discursive text may find themselves lost in the mesmerizing mess. However, the language is beautiful and the scope is epic yet also extremely personal, but one read-through may not be enough to gather in this much ambition.
I’m giving up on this almost halfway through it.
I love an atmospheric book, I love art, I like experimental writing & can definitely appreciate descriptive language, I enjoy historical fiction, and I’m all for an unreliable narrator. But I can’t with this one, it doesn’t engage me in the slightest. There are other books out there.
I love an atmospheric book, I love art, I like experimental writing & can definitely appreciate descriptive language, I enjoy historical fiction, and I’m all for an unreliable narrator. But I can’t with this one, it doesn’t engage me in the slightest. There are other books out there.
"That a book should never digress is something with which I have never held." (190)
This is a book full of marvellous, exciting (and yes, sometimes tiring) digressions. It circles its subjects matter, its main themes coming and going like the waves.
It deals with colonialism, Eurocentrism and - most of all, I would say - implicated subjects, negotiating guilt, memory and forgetting along the way. Definitely also recommendable for anyone interested in ecocriticism.
There is so much in this book, I highly recommend reading it. Be aware, however, if you do not like a postmodern style - I have to admit, even though I sometimes enjoy postmodern techniques, it gets a little annoying at times. At others, it's super fun.
Last words: At one point, the frame narrator remarks about the Book of Fish: "The author wrote in colours; more precisely, I suspect, he felt in colours." (17) -- for some reason, this quote stayed with me while reading the novel and it somehow captures the feeling of reading the book for me.
This is a book full of marvellous, exciting (and yes, sometimes tiring) digressions. It circles its subjects matter, its main themes coming and going like the waves.
It deals with colonialism, Eurocentrism and - most of all, I would say - implicated subjects, negotiating guilt, memory and forgetting along the way. Definitely also recommendable for anyone interested in ecocriticism.
There is so much in this book, I highly recommend reading it. Be aware, however, if you do not like a postmodern style - I have to admit, even though I sometimes enjoy postmodern techniques, it gets a little annoying at times. At others, it's super fun.
Last words: At one point, the frame narrator remarks about the Book of Fish: "The author wrote in colours; more precisely, I suspect, he felt in colours." (17) -- for some reason, this quote stayed with me while reading the novel and it somehow captures the feeling of reading the book for me.