Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish [Paperback]

Will a valid history of that Empire ever be written? Flanagan makes no such claim. He views its immensity from a tiny salient through the eyes of one its outcasts. William Buelow Gould is a man whose perception becomes increasingly distorted in a place that could break the strongest mind. Macquarie Harbour was a dumping ground for "hard case" convicts. Here, a thirty-two year old appears dismayingly aged. Here, all were "cobbers and dobbers" - men were mates ranged against prison authority but turning traitor against each other ["dobbing in"] when survival was the issue. Gould, an artist-forger, seems spared the worst effects of The System when he's posted to the colony's surgeon to produce watercolours of the local marine life. In this role, Flanagan takes us on a tour of "scientifick" thought of the time and its impact on people on the far reaches of the Empire - which spans the planet. Phrenology, evolution, religion of the time come to light from his skilled prose.

Gould, ever a pawn on The System's board, is taken from the surgeon to embark on a fresh enterprise. The prison Commandant has a commission for him. Gould's new project reflects the Commandant's ambitions for the colony, but we witness a new attitude in Gould as the story develops. What truly happened in this place bracketed by screaming winds and a mountain wilderness that inhibited dreams of escape? Flanagan makes Gould the only valid witness to events - at least the only one leaving a record. Can we, however, trust the words of someone recording so many irrational acts? Gould assures us: "if you can't trust a liar & a forger, a whore & an informer, a convicted murderer & a thief, you'll never understand this country." To Flanagan, that statement sums up the dilemma of Australia. Whose account of history are we to believe?

Gould is ultimately convicted of a bizarre murder and placed in a cell inundated by each day's tide. Using his marine paintings he begins the chronicle of his life in the colony. His Book of Fish, however, ranges far beyond simply a journal of events illustrated with symbolic watercolours. Flanagan assaults all written accounts as deceptive, even questioning the validity of the most mundane of books - a prison registry. The registry becomes a pivot around which Flanagan twists a skein of questions of human values. More than simply historical "truth" is under scrutiny here. What price are we prepared to pay in resolving "scientifick" issues? How can we categorize our fellow humans when we know, as Aborigine Twopenny Sal tells Gould, "Long time before, you were us." Human ancestry lies in Africa, not London, Sydney or even Ottawa. These questions haunt Gould throughout the book, and Flanagan wants them to haunt you a bit, as well. Read him and ponder them.

Anyone expecting the relatively straightforward narrative style of Flanagan's award-winning 'The Sound of One Hand Clapping'- also set in Tasmania - will quickly find themselves adrift in a very different world. Whereas the previous novel was almost painfully lucid and often brilliantly understated both in terms of the language employed and topics covered, 'Gould's Book of Fish' is a rather murky, often slippery flight of fancy, tackling as it does a number of topics; colonialism, liberty, art and science being but a few amongst many. Indeed, one may well argue that Flanagan's apparent desire for breadth is sometimes to the detriment of depth.

However, to attach too much weight to the handling of these various sub-topics - competent or otherwise - is to neglect that which lies at the heart of the book; namely the issue of reality. Flanagan's narrative is peppered with references to this central topic throughout - Gould is a 'pathetick forger'; the latter-day discoverer of the 'Book of Fish' is a man who trades on people's readiness to be deceived by the romantic tales he weaves around his fake antiques and who recounts Gould's tale from memory; whilst the book's ending leaves one with more questions than answers as to the identity of both narrators and the truth of their accounts. It is this subject - the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction - that allows Flanagan to wander at will through the half-crazed minds of his characters and which underpins the tale's numerous twists and turns. Flanagan has been criticised by many for allowing his Joycean love of language to muddy the waters of this ambitious work, but to my mind his style - whilst often infuriating - fits perfectly, ensuring that the reader is wholly consumed by the mind of the central character. A serious contender for the Booker.