'Read it and weep', 23 November 2008, The Sunday Tasmanian. Reviewed by Christopher Bantick. |
||
| WHEN a novel's central character becomes the subject of letter writers then it is clear Richard Flanagan's new book has stuck a sensitive chord. The Mercury has had a debate of recent times over the historical representation of Mathinna, not so much by Flanagan in his astounding novel, Wanting, but in those with opinions on what is factual and what isn't. But Wanting, for all its historical antecedents, is not history, or does it set out to be. In fact, Flanagan, in his author's note, makes it patently clear: ``This novel is not a history, nor should it be read as one.'' While some readers will compare this view with the declared distance Kate Grenville took from history in her recent novel The Lieutenant, any comparison of Grenville's book and Flanagan's Wanting is futile. Although both books use the context of settler society and indigenous people in part, Grenville's book is almost juvenile in its execution of ideas and language. Flanagan's is a mature work. English novelist Anthony Burgess wrote of fiction this way: ``Writing a novel should be for its author a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.'' In Wanting, we see not only a journey of the author into the dark night of Tasmania's soul, but the naked honesty of Flanagan reaching for language to convey not only his ideas but the emotional force of the story he has to tell. This is in short a stunning book. It is the best book I have read this year and I can't think readily of a better novel in 2007 either. While prizes and awards are lotteries where the opinion of judges can get a book across the line -- I know as I have been one -- Wanting deserves the highest accolades. It will, regardless of its future success, be treated seriously as a piece of literary storytelling that sets a new benchmark. What makes this novel remarkable is the facility Flanagan has with language. Without words on a page, the richness of his ideas and the cadences of his heart songs are not heard. It is the language here that will cause you to weep. It did me in the final pages where we realise that what befalls Mathinna is akin to the fall of man. Where Ralph in William Golding's Lord of the Flies can ``weep for the darkness of man's heart'', and the prophet Jeremiah can reflect that ``man's heart is deceitfully wicked'', we see in the final scenes of this novel this and more. Although Wanting sits securely on the top of the Tasmanian bestseller lists, and readers are talking about it, I am not about to tell you what happens here. Readers should look to this novel and discover not only something about the past, but also about themselves. Wanting is a novel which reminds us what it is to desire, to long for and to covet. In that, Wanting is a story with clear contemporary resonance. Even so, what Flanagan does brilliantly is tell a story. Let's not forget that beyond the journalism of the heart and head, the public passionate stances he has taken and the political comments he has made, he is essentially a storyteller of sensitivity and poetry. There is something translucently beautiful in the miasmic image of Mathinna, a seven-year-old girl running through wallaby grass, which begins the story of her life. It is an image we recall with achingly lasting grief at the novel's end. Even as I type this, and I recall the final page, my eyes fill with tears. But before we get there, Flanagan takes us into a fictional world that is not only superbly evoked, but arresting. We will not see Lady Jane and Sir John Franklin with the same regard again, nor should we. This is not Flanagan's intention. He has not rewritten the past here. He allows us to form our own views. He has quite properly, as a novelist, allowed his imagination to portray these significant Hobartian figures in a less than charitable light. Does he persuade us? Yes. But remember this is fiction. Still, Flanagan is if anything an iconoclast. He regards history here as requiring a reappraisal. The way he portrays the Franklins is unflattering and unforgettable. But this is not his main focus. Lady Jane Franklin is in a marriage without issue. She is repulsed by her husband and while he is her ``dancing bear'' we too share her revulsion of a man beset by animalistic instincts held in check beneath the counterpane of public decorum. Mathinna offers some solace. She is adopted by the Franklins only to be abandoned in an orphanage. In this the Franklins, specifically Sir John, are culpable. It is intervention and then despair, a scenario which has characterised much of indigenous and white relations in this country. While the focus on Mathinna is the ballast of the book, Flanagan expands his vision to incorporate Charles Dickens into the narrative. Sir John has disappeared on an expedition to the Arctic. There are rumours that there has been cannibalism. To resurrect his soiled reputation, Lady Jane asks Dickens to assist in writing a positive piece about Sir John. This is an astute move by Flanagan. Although we are still troubled by the fate of Mathinna and we judge the Franklins harshly and rightly so for wanting the child, Flanagan underscores the oscillating passions of Dickens with his own desperate wanting as well. It is here that the novel emerges from its chrysalis of the darkness of wild times in Tasmania to a love story. Dickens is now the centre, with his failing marriage and desire for a young actress Ellen Ternan. The unity of ideas here is exquisitely balanced. We see in the failed and utterly self-serving wanting by the Franklins for the Aboriginal child Mathinna reflected in the wanting of fulfilment by Dickens in the arms of a young woman. This shimmering, intensely felt story reaches its harrowing conclusion with us feeling edified for reading it but also deeply unsettled as well. It is us Flanagan is writing about here, no matter where we live, what age we live in and what our circumstances may be. We cannot, none of us, escape who we are. The hope is we want to be better. This tragic, soul-searing book reminds us of the imperative need to be so. |