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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
This was my first experience with Richard Flanagan, but certainly won't be my last. His style is extraordinary: eccentric to say the least. This book really is a literary masterpiece, and brings life and humanity to a little piece of our history.
Flanagan has created book inception by writing a book called Gould’s Book of Fish about a person finding Gould’s Book of Fish (and subsequently losing it), then becoming a fish, and then the author of the Book of Fish and then ultimately becoming one of the fish which are the subject of Gould’s Book of Fish. Confused yet?
Gould’s Book of Fish is an incredible work of historic fiction which challenges our ideas of the past, present and future - the book is entirely in a league of its own.
Gould uses language in a way that is equally beautiful and grotesque:
“Your feet, Your bowels, Your mound, Your armpits, Your smell & Your sounds & taste, Your fallen Beauty, I was Divine in Your image & I was You & I was no longer long for this grand early & why is it no words would tell how I was so much hurting aching bidding farewell?”
Make no mistake, this is not an easy read - it takes hard work at times to make sense of where the storyline is heading.
This piece of work makes me extremely proud to be Tasmanian and I am excited to go and revisit the real-life Gould’s Sketchbook of Fishes to find more meaning from Flanagan’s work.
Gould’s Book of Fish is an incredible work of historic fiction which challenges our ideas of the past, present and future - the book is entirely in a league of its own.
Gould uses language in a way that is equally beautiful and grotesque:
“Your feet, Your bowels, Your mound, Your armpits, Your smell & Your sounds & taste, Your fallen Beauty, I was Divine in Your image & I was You & I was no longer long for this grand early & why is it no words would tell how I was so much hurting aching bidding farewell?”
Make no mistake, this is not an easy read - it takes hard work at times to make sense of where the storyline is heading.
This piece of work makes me extremely proud to be Tasmanian and I am excited to go and revisit the real-life Gould’s Sketchbook of Fishes to find more meaning from Flanagan’s work.
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
Fantastical story exploring convict life in early 19th century Tasmania, or, as it was then called, van Diemen’s Land. The book is loosely based on William Gould, who was a gifted illustrator and painter, and especially on his ‘Sketchbook of Fishes’. Gould was transported to Australia as a convict for a minor misdemeanour, like many convicts. The book gives a good impression of the especially brutal penal colonies in van Diemen’s Land. Unusually, this exceptionally well written book also contains reproductions of Gould’s original artwork from his Sketchbook of Fishes.
You can't knock this one till the end. The book is a journey, one like I have never taken before, and I highly recommend it to anyone even vaguely interested in colonial Australian history, prison culture, race relations, pompous British redcoats...or, for that matter, fish.
Although I did not like the narrator, the content, or the style, [book:Gould's Book of Fish] did draw me in and make me think, especially about the nature of history and fiction, about what I should believe and what I'm even meant to believe.
Like walking through molasses. I love Richard Flanagan but felt this book tried just a bit too hard.
Sim, está muito bem escrito...sim, a ideia é brilhante.....sim, percebo as óptimas críticas....Em rigor, tinha tudo para eu ter adorado este livro, mas, não sei bem porquê, não encaixou. No entanto, vale muito a pena. Provavelmente até merecia 4 estrelas, mas não seria verdade.
One of the most brilliant novels I've ever read. This will take you on a real journey and constantly suprise you. What's amazing is that in the midst of what sometimes seems like pure nonsense, there's actually a lot of historical detail about life in the brutal penal colonies in Australia.