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A review by nadinekc
Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
4.0
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.
.