A Wigwam for a Goose's Bridle

It’s been a weird year, and while some of us were homeschooling and trying to make sourdough, our more talented counterparts were truly creating. Taylor Swift blessed us with Folklore, and Man Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan pumped out a new novel.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, set late 2019 to early 2020, follows Anna and her family. Anna’s mother is dying, but she and her siblings, in a complicated manner, refuse to let her do so. The country is also burning. And then one of Anna’s fingers vanishes. No trauma. No pain. Just a vanishing. As the novel progresses, more of Anna vanishes, and eventually others too, in what appears to be an allegory of the way we are losing species and habitats.

Richard Flanagan is arguably one of Australia’s best novelists. And I think it is that which allows him to get away with a distinct lack of proper punctuation and syntax. There are definitely moments in the book where the run-on sentences of train of thought add to the sense of urgency and heighten the drama, but I must admit I frequently found it frustrating and felt he could just have easily worked magic with proper sentences. I did have to suspend disbelief for the vanishing-body-parts plot line, which felt at odds with the crushing realism of the rest of the novel, but I think I felt what he was trying to achieve with this, and I respect that.

In true Flanagan style, he has captured so many aspects of human life so perfectly, and this is an exploration of our destructive nature unlike any I have read before. Did I like it though? I can’t say I did. I alternated between loving it and hating it, but I almost feel as though I was meant to. Unlike some of his others (Death of a Riverguide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, The Narrow Road to the Deep North) I’m not going to tell you that I think you should read this book. But… I’m also not going to say you shouldn’t. It is interesting, thought-provoking, uncomfortable food for thought.