Gould's Book of Fish

In the reviews that are printed in the Grove Press Trade edition, I counted 22 renowned authors the critics cite with whom to compare Flanagan. The list is rather impressive and includes Joyce, Melville, Conrad, Rabelais, Borges, Hemingway, Marquez, Swift, Morrison, Pynchon, Sterne, Dante, Ovid, de Quincey, Heller, Dickens, Camus, Faulkner, Fielding, Smollet, Dostoevsky and, by inference, Peter Carey (the reference is to Carey's character, Ned Kelly in The True History of the Kelly Gang). Throw in a reference to Wuthering Heights (in terms of the book's lingering effect upon the reader's imagination) and you see the sort of playing field Flannagan is occupying. In terms of critical acclaim, the guy has arrived. The praise is justified. Great novels introduce us to fully realized worlds, which burst forth from singular imaginations. This is just such a work. As T.S. Elliot noted, great literature also connotes, contains and reexpresses the great literature of the past. As you can infer from the number of references cited, this book acomplishes that. Great works also contain great characters and William Buelow Gould, "sloe-souled, green-eyed, gap-toothed, shaggy-haired & grizzle-gutted" is as large and expressive a character as has been penned in recent literature. He's witty, expansive, loveable, colorful and as dimensional as they come. He's unforgettable, as are several of the other characters in the novel, most notably the penitentiary surgeon, Mr. Lempriere, in his passionate quest to become another Linnaeus, fellow convict Capois Death, who represents the life-force irrepressible. Towering over them all is the most surreal Commandant, once himself a convict, who through luck and subterfuge has assumed the identity of a British officer who perished in a shipwreck off the coast of Tasmania. He is rescued and taken back to the nearby penal colony, where he again lucks out when the old Commandant dies and there is no one else to replace him. He ultimately assumes absolute power and control over every guard, soldier and inmate in the colony and proceeds to engage all these unfortunate inhabitants in fullfilling his grandiose schemes. To accentuate his god-like stature, he has a gold mask fashioned for him, behind which his old identity disappears. His history and his fate, becomes inextricably linked with Gould's. One word of warning, and it is the sort of warning that small children would be powerless to obey, but I know that I am writing to intelligent, mature readers here. Do not look at the final page of the book!! It will ruin the read for you, I assure you, and it is such a great read, you really don't want that to happen, do you? Remember the old adage about Curiosity and the fate of the cat!! Don't be led by your feline instincts!! Save the surprise for the right time! I know that I've just made that difficult for you, but it's just not worth it, I assure you! OK, now that that's settled, go get a copy of this treasure and prepare

Flanagan uses a penal colony and fish paintings to create a book that looks vividly at the edge between the joy and helplessness. William Buelow Gould does not understand all the history happening around him, is not much of a hero, is surrounded by people who are not who they say they are, and is manipulated by times as well as tides. He paints, and falls in love with his subject. He reads and tries to understand the difference between truth and fiction. His world is full of grotty mysteries and inadequate explanations and occasionally a genuine miracle. I lack the critical vocabulary to explain why I liked it as much as I did. Think Borges mixed with Faulkner with illustrations by Blake. And a little bit of Pynchon thrown in for good measure. "I just wanted to tell a story of love & it was about fish & it was about me & it was about everything." If you want to read it and can find it, then pick up the hardcover. The illustrations are much better and the chapters are printed in different colors-- making the "12 Fish" aspect much clearer.

Writing one of the must unusual and imaginative books I've read in a long time, Flanagan presents a multi-leveled novel which is full of wry, sometimes hilarious, observations about people and history, at the same time that it is a scathing indictment of colonialism's cruelties and its prison system, in particular. Almost schizophrenic in its approach, the novel jerks the reader back and forth from delighted amusement to horrified revulsion in a series of episodes that clearly parallel the unstable inner life of main character William Buelow Gould, who lives in "a world that demanded reality imitate fiction." Sentenced to life imprisonment on an island off the coast of Tasmania, Gould cleverly plays the survival game, ingratiating himself with the authorities through his willingness to paint whatever they want-species of fish for the surgeon, fake Constable landscapes for the turnkey Pobjoy, murals for the Commandant's great Mah-jong Hall, and backdrops for his railroad to nowhere. It is through the fish paintings that Gould paints for himself, however, that he tries to hang onto his sanity against overwhelming cruelty, continuing to believe that life has meaning, though "[it] is a mystery...and love the mystery within the mystery." This is not an easy book. The action, such as it is, is all filtered through Gould's mind, and that is shaky, at best. In a few passages, Gould (and Hammett, the speaker who opens the novel) describe dream-like reactions to events, reflecting their mental states (not magic realism). When the last hundred pages become surreal, the reader is well-prepared to accept the strange events which unfold. Flanagan's novel is very clever, and his use of specific fish as parallels to the people and events within chapters (especially the serpent eel) is particularly amusing. His characteristically 19th century list of topics at the beginning of each chapter, his duplication of the writing style of the period, his satire, his literary jokes (purple sea urchin ink for "purple prose," jokes about George Keats's brother, a failed poet), and his broad vision of what makes life meaningful are signs of a mature novelist who doesn't hesitate to take chances--5 stars for originality! Mary Whipple

This is most certainly a bleak read and if it hadn't been so well-written, I might have given up on it fairly early on. Readers that have faith that it all must mean something will have that faith rewarded eventually, though. Honestly, it took me until I reached around page 300 of this 400 page novel to decide that I actually liked it. By the time I reached the end, I was so, so happy that I had pressed on. This isn't just the catalogue of miseries it seems to be for so many pages. There is, indeed, a point and once the themes of the novel become clear, the reader finds himself remembering details from the previous few hundred page in a new, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic way. Loads of fun. I am definitely moving on to something with a bit more tenderness for my next read, but I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Lovely to look at, too.

For those who have read Flanagan's early work Gould's Book of Fish will come as a surpise, even a shock. This novel has it all with elements of the masters like Faulkner, Borges and Conrad. Some of the book's violence is reminiscent of McCarthy's Blood Meridian.Most of all it is great story told by one who will become perhaps modern fiction's most unreliable narrator, the liar and thief Billy Gould. If you want to understand the nature and brutality of Van Diemen's Land in the dark days of nineteenth century this is the book. This island now called Tasmania was England's gulag, a brutal penal colony. This was where the riff raff and unlucky players of the Empire ended their days. The native population were not spared either or, indeed at all.Through Gould's wild meanderings we learn what it was like to live at the whim of the colonial masters. And not many were granted mercy.Flanagan has always had insight into character and the workings of the human heart. In the Book of Fish he has excelled not only with insight but with his vision of society, then and now. The big questions are asked.This is great novel and is essential reading for those interested in Australian and colonial history, power, human nature and for those who love fantastic writing. Flanagan outdoes Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang here and the way the author winds up his novel is simply dazzling.