The Living Sea of Waking Dreams | Richard Flanagan #AUSfiction

 

I know there is a lot of love for The Living Sea in Waking Dreams out there already. 

It's not that I didn't love it, or even admire what Flanagan was trying to achieve, but it's not easy to read a book where you feel like you're being smashed over the head, not just with a hammer, but with the biggest, heaviest mallet that Flanagan could find, on every single page, at every single turn. With such a convoluted title, I was expecting more nuance and intellectual word play. Instead I got whack after whack of anger.

Flanagan has a lot to be angry about.

Last summer was ghastly for all of us in Australia. The bush fires were the worst we'd ever experienced. Our skies were grey with smoke and ash for month after month. The smell was inescapable, the heat was oppressive, the news catastrophic. It was easy to feel like it was the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning.

Writing a book while all of this is happening around you, can take its toll. It can be hard to find perspective. It can be hard not to rave and rant in absolute frustration. It can be hard to resist a good old preachy sermon. Flanagan did not resist.

There was nothing subtle in his story about vanishing body parts, a dying mother and a world in flames. The ghastly siblings, Anna & Terzo, who refused to let their mother die with any dignity or grace, were so implausible, I struggled to spend my time with them. Their brother, Tommy, was much nicer company and more realistically drawn, as was Anna's son, Gus. But then, Tommy was the actual carer. He was on hand in Tasmania to care for their ailing mother, while the other two simply jetted in and out whenever there was a problem to be solved. And Gus' response to a world on the brink of catastrophic climate change is to withdraw into a world of gaming and Youtube videos. 

Flanagan ranted several times about social media and smartphone use. Clearly he is not someone who properly understands these online tools. Nothing about the way his characters engaged with their online world actually reflected anyone I know. He had all the right words, but just like Mr Books & I discussing Tiktok or Snapchat or memes with our boys, we show our ignorance at every turn, much to their amusement.

I feel like I'm the one ranting now!

I didn't not like the book. 

It was an interesting read and an interesting concept, with all the vanishings that nobody noticed, that spoke for, or to, something even bigger and scarier that nobody is noticing either. However I felt no emotional connection to anyone in the story, except pity - a huge amount of pity, in fact - for the undying, lingering, suffering, decaying mother. I found myself talking out loud to Flanagan throughout the book, telling him to get out of the way of his own story.

I love it, though, when I discover the title in the story.

It wasn't enough for Terzo that their mother had not died. It wasn't enough that she lived in her sea of waking dreams. In Terzo's view, she had to live like us, rationally, in a rational universe.

Except of course, Terzo's world, or his idea of living, were not as rational as he thought.

In the end, though, the occasional insights and beautiful writing were not enough for me to rate The Living Sea of Waking Dreams particularly highly. 

It astonished her that he had a view as deeply held felt as hers and yet entirely opposite, and which he held with an equal conviction. And in the face of someone who would not be persuaded by her, she did not seek to see the world for a moment as he saw it but instead was simply angry with him that his world was not her world.

I'm in the process of putting together my best 20 reads of 2020. This one will not make the cut.

Epigraph: 

John Clare | Remembrances

To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey;

And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak's narrow lane

With its hollow trees like pulpits, I shall never see again:

Inclosure like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain,

It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill

And hung the moles for traitors - though the brook is running still,

It runs a naked brook, cold and chill.

Opening Lines:

1.

Her hand.

2. 

It's impossible to say how the vanishing began or if it was already ended, thought Anna.

Other Opinions:

• The Conversation | 8th Oct 2020 | Tony Hughes-d'Aeth

The brilliance of Flanagan’s story and the deep power of this novel is in our witnessing of the end of the world. The death of Francie opens up a black hole in the family drawing Anna, Terzo and Tommy into its implacable singularity.

• The Guardian | 16th Oct 2020 | Beejay Silcox

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams [is] at its best when it balances its vehemence with its beauty, when it leaves space for the reader to wander and wonder – eucalypt leaves swinging down like “lazing scimitars”; a moth thrumming its “Persian rug” wings.

• Lisa @ANZ Lit Lover found more to like than I did.

UK Cover

I've been trying to take a photo of the beautiful green textured feather design on the hard cover underneath the glossy black dust jacket, that would do it justice. You'll have to take my word for it. It's much more interesting than the dust jacket image. The next time you're in a bookshop, carefully open the jacket and take a peek for yourself.

The Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy #AUSfiction

 

Charlotte McConaghy has written an intense, emotional story about the effects of mass extinction in The Last Migration. I don't normally quote the back blurb of the book, but in this case it so aptly describes the book, I'm really not sure I can top it.

The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving novel from a brilliant young writer. From the west coast of Ireland to Australia and remote Greenland, through crashing Atlantic swells to the bottom of the world, this is an ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened, and an epic story of the possibility of hope against all odds.

Our protagonist, Franny Stone, clearly has some major issues going on her personal life, and we can see that she is using this search/hunt/journey to run away from her problems of perhaps find closure. However, McConaghy slowly reveals that her personal issues are actually interwoven into the plight of the migrating birds.

The story is quite angst-ridden and there were times when I wanted to shake Franny into a more sensible, rational frame of mind as she crashed from one scene to the next in her search for personal redemption. But then, I guess it can be hard to be sensible and rational when faced with the reality of a mass extinction of an entire species and the existential loneliness that this climate crisis implies for all of us!

There was a dreamy quality or an otherworldly aspect to this high seas adventure that held the urgency and dramatic tension of the sea voyage at bay. For this reader, they were a welcome relief from the harsh descriptions of life on a small boat in a big sea!

McConaghy references several other authors and poets throughout her book. They are books her characters have read or quote from. I'm always fascinated by this occasional tendency of authors and I like to make a list for future reference. 

Here we Colm Toibin, Mary Oliver (and her poem on geese), Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Margaret Atwood, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I love the ending of Mary Oliver | Wild Geese in particular and share it below.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The other thing that fascinates me is covers and titles. 

Above I have the Australian title and cover.

Below are the cover and title for the USA, a proof copy and Germany. All three of which I prefer way more than the Australian cover. I don't know why so many Aussie covers insist on using a human figure. They turn me off for some reason. 

As an aside, I had been feeling very negative about the new Richard Flanagan, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams. Partly thanks to my experience with his previous book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but also in part to the submerged face of a woman on the cover! However, when I finally picked it up, I discovered that underneath the off-putting face dust jacket is a gorgeous leaf-textured hardcover book and inside is a story that has me completely engaged. Needless to say, I have discarded the dust jacket.

But back to The Last Migration.

I feel the Australian title best describes the story as Migrations suggests that there is more than one migration, when clearly the story is highlighting the very last migration of the Arctic terns. Although now I think about, it could be a plural to allude to the migration or journey taken by our protagonist as well. Hmmm, interesting.

US cover and title

US proof cover?

German cover and title

Eco-dystopian (environmental end of the world as we know it stories) or climate fiction are not everyone's cup of tea, but I have become a bit of a fan, if you can call a mere handful of titles, a fan. The Overstory by Richard Powers is an absorbing, epic climate fiction novel well worth your time, while The Rain Heron and Flames, both by Robbie Arnott are eco-dystopian and also firm favourites of mine. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy is also eco-dystopian as well. 

Epigraph: Rumi

Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

The entire passage reads: “Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”

Opening Line: 

The animals are all dying. Soon we will be alone here.

Favourite Quote:

there is meaning, and it lives in nurturing, in making life sweeter for ourselves, and for those around us.

#AusReadingMonth
#Australian Women Writers

The Rain Heron | Robbie Arnott #AUSfiction

Thank goodness for Robbie.

After a spate of so-so books and DNF's, I finally landed on this beautifully imagined, eco-dystopian tour de force from my new favourite contemporary Australian writer.

My love affair with Arnott started last year, when I read his debut novel, Flames. This is a little of what I had to say about him at the time,

Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

Arnott has matured into a writer to watch. In The Rain Heron he has moved onto a stronger narrative structure on which to hang his story, although, dare I say, it was the shorter stories that began the book, that enthralled me the most. 

The first sighting of the rain heron, in all it's majesty and brutality, was mesmerising. Zoe's early life with her aunt, fishing for squid ink, is something I will never forget. Ren's life, precariously carved out, on the side of a mountain was so powerfully written, that I also felt like I had lived through every hardship and battle with nature that Ren had experienced. 

The invented world that Arnott has evoked feels so real. After the summer we've had in Australia, his dystopian vision of a world battling against itself and against nature in a fight for survival, feels much closer than it once did. In Arnott's world, as the climate and environment becomes more unpredictable and dangerous, humans react with equal savagery.

His nature fable takes us on a journey of survival and resilience, loss and hope that resonates even more strongly during these Covid times. A story that promises redemption through kindness is a story we all need to hear right now.

I'm a fan. A HUGE fan.

The Rain Heron is probably the best book I've read so far in 2020. Arnott takes you on a journey into his imagination - a place where the natural world is one of the main characters - a place exquisitely evoked with words and phrases to swoon over. Arnott’s writing weaves and swoops through beauty and brutality with ease. I was left breathless with wonder, eagerly anticipating his third book.

Facts:

• Flames was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.
• Awarded the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists for 2019.
• Winner of the Margaret Scott Prize 2019 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes.
• Shortlisted for the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary Award.
• Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award.

Favourite Quotes:

Thunder crashed through the walls; lightning licked trees; the wind grew fangs and chewed barns into splinters... 

...her body draped over the branches like a nightgown hung out to dry. 

Perhaps if he had been older, he wouldn’t have done it. With more winters in his bones he may have been kinder, less jealous, more contemplative. Or maybe not-inside this boy there was a bitter kink, and perhaps no amount of time or experience could have untwisted it.

Alternative Covers:

UK Cover

US Cover

About Robbie:

• I'm always fascinated to know how and when writers write. 
• I discovered this passage on Show Your Working over at Kill Your Darlings. The highlights are mine.

Describe your writing practice?

For the first few days of each week I get up at six and write for an hour and a half, then go to work. I usually finish around six, walk home, have dinner, and write for another hour or so until I can’t think anymore. That routine all goes to shit by the end of the week, though. Thursdays and Fridays I always plan on getting some writing done, but barely do any. I have a solid crack on either Saturday or Sunday, then start all over again.

How do you encourage inspiration to strike?

Whenever I don’t know how to solve a problem I’ve written myself into, or if I can’t think of something interesting to write about, I go for a walk without my phone.

The best advice I think I’ve ever heard came from Michelle de Kretser....She was talking about how plot is important, and character is important, but ‘literature lives in the sentences’. Nothing has ever resonated with me so much. Hearing that made me feel like I had a license to obsess over language.

 

Favourite or Forget:

• Unforgettable and a favourite and best read of 2020.

Flames by Robbie Arnott

It's a long weekend in Australia, and for the first time in over a year, we've enjoyed a lazy, nothing-to-do-but-flop-around-the-house kind of weekend. It has been blissful. Even with the ghastly high temps and even higher humidity, or maybe because of, it has been the perfect time for reading, snoozing and listening to music as we sporadically clean and tidy the house.

Typing up reviews has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Lots of changes (the good, positive, life-going-forward kind of changes, but changes nonetheless) are coming our way this year - starting next week when B18 goes away to Uni.

The teenage years are not easy for anyone to live through, which is maybe Nature's way of making it easy for both teens and their parents to let go. But as tough as the last few years have been (and there were times when I thought my sanity would not survive intact), I wouldn't now swap them for anything.

Which brings me to Flames by Robbie Arnott. Like a teenager in full flight, it's a hard novel to define or pin down. Like a teenager, it's a debut with flights of fancy, bravado and wild schemes. It's on the verge of greatness, oozing potential and grand ideas. But unlike living with teenagers, I loved every minute of it and can't wait to see what Arnott does next!

The Tasmanian environment is one of the prominent characters throughout this genre-defying story which Arnott uses to stress the interconnectedness between us all. Fire, water, trees and the gods play their parts too.

Flames has a fablesque quality and is mythological in tone with different writing styles to suit each characters story. Arnott plays around with magic realism, an epistolary chapter, report writing and the fabulous chapter with the female private eye that reads like a Tasmanian Philip Marlowe, just to name a few. It should have felt disjointed and all over the place, but just like a teen, it somehow made sense and seemed like just the right thing to do at that time.

Through his various characters, Arnott explores the wild, raw nature of grief, mourning and love. We watch them come to terms with letting go of what they thought they knew as they learn to embrace the unknowable future and whatever it might bring. No matter how far apart you may seem to be, you are still family, you are still connected, and it will ultimately keep you afloat, if you let it.

Arnott is a young Tasmanian copywriter. Flames has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, the Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction, and the Queensland Literary Awards: University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 2018.

Facts:

• Longlisted | 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
• Winner | Margaret Scott Prize | Tasmanian Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019
• Longlisted | Indie Book Awards for Debut Fiction 2019
• Shortlisted | UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing | NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2019
• Shortlisted | Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award 2018
• Shortlisted | Kathleen Mitchell Award 2019
• Longlisted | ALS Gold Medal 2019
• Longlisted | Miles Franklin Literary Award 2019
• Longlisted | Voss Literary Prize 2019
• Shortlisted | Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize UK 2019