Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish

Rating:
Summary: The Liar's Tale
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: captivating, colorful, fascinating
Review: I bought this book in hardcover based solely on its appearance. The cover is beautiful, the illustrations inside are wonderful, and the differently colored chapters intrigued me. Once I actually started reading this, I was -- pardon the pun -- hooked. It's a self-proclaimed novel but I chose to read it as historical fiction. Maybe 1 percent of it is based on fact, or maybe only the names were changed. It's such a complete story (including the illustrations and text color), you could believe this really happened. It's thrilling and funny and fantastical and gets your heart pounding and imagining running. I LOVED it, and I hoped you do too.

Rating:
Summary: Clever, complex, and intriguing.
Review: 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!