The first book I read of Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan was Gould's Book of Fish, which is about fish and colonialism and existence, set mainly in the British penal colony, Van Diemen's Land, in the 19th century. It is odd and magnificent, in its very own fishy way. Flanagan has written a number of subsequent novels, and this year his memoir, Question 7 (title comes from a Chekhov story), came out. Not a linear memoir by any means, it's instead comprised of fragments, facets of Flanagan's life and influences.
Flanagan grew up in and exists because of the atomic age. His father was a Japanese POW, and had the U.S. not dropped the atom bombs but had invaded instead (one of the alternate plans), Flanagan's father would most likely have died in the invasion and missed becoming a father. Some fragments in Question 7 concern that atomic age: a discourse on a fission expert, the story of the affair between Rebecca West and War of the Worlds author H.G. Wells, the experiences of Flanagan's father in the prison near Hiroshima, and how that trauma affected him afterwards. Another describes the genocide of the Tasmanian aboriginals. In the last riveting segment, Flanagan details a river-running trip gone awry. His kayak gets trapped between rocks on a wild river and he almost dies.
Do these fragments cohere in any way, obvious or otherwise? No! But what interesting lives can claim coherence?
Ultimately, the memoir is about memory and surviving, and, in some cases, how to survive memories. I have found it hard to get out of my mind—nor do I want to. Like Gould's Book of Fish, it is odd and magnificent.
After I finished Question 7, I reread The Narrow Road to the Deep North, my favorite Flanagan novel. Favorite is an inept word here, because it is a brutal, brutal book. The main character is a doctor in a Japanese POW camp, one of the camps that used prisoners to build the Burma Railway. Many prisoners died and those who survived were forever altered. It's a tough book to read, but also beautifully written and intensely moving.
Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.