By way of H.G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die. At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place, and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
Somewhat mystical ... Interweave[s] beautifully evoked memories of the author’s childhood in a poor and extended Catholic family in Tasmania ... To bring this richly layered book to a close Flanagan re-creates, in harrowing detail ... Significant.
Unusual, unpredictable and slippery ... What Flanagan achieves so well is locating what is intimately human within his grand sweep ... This is a book of big swings, not minor complaints. It might even be guilty at times of grandiosity, given how it draws a line backward from Flanagan’s birth through some of the most consequential events and scientific discoveries of the 20th century, but the writing exerts an irresistible power and carries us with it.
A mournful dirge for a natural realm savaged by saws and tractors and bulldozers.
More than a vivid recreation of one boy’s inner life, the book is also a mural of ideas ... His elegies ring clear and true.
