- Paperback: 9999 pages
- Publisher: Picador; New edition edition (12 Mar 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 033035292X
- ISBN-13: 978-0330352925
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 510,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
‘A truly extraordinary work: vivid, passionate and utterly compelling . . . It opens a world that is strange, brutal and poetic at once, and ultimately achieves he kind of spirit-healing few novels do’ Niall Williams, author of Four Letters of Love
Book Description
‘Flanagan’s enthralling and powerful novel centres on a Slovenian couple, Bojan and Maria Buloh, and their daughter Sonja. The story begins in 1954, when Sonja is three, and ends in 1990, when she is in her late thirties . . . The novel begins with Maria Buloh . . . leaving the wooden hut in the Tasmanian highlands which is now her home. A blizzard is blowing, and behind Maria three-year-old Sonja cries for her to come back – but she does not . . . To understand why Maria leaves her child is to understand a little the impact of Nazi occupation on those who were scarred for the rest of their lives by what they had seen . . . The novel lives by its moments of defining truth’ Helen Dunmore, The Times ‘Like Carol Shield’s The Stone Diaries, The Sound of One Hand Clapping achieves the difficult task of making clear and real the lives of those who normally stay hidden in history. From its wonderfully atmospheric opening to its touching conclusion, this is a heartbreaking story, beautifully told’ Literary Review ‘Richly imagined . . . told in a voice rarely heard in Australia: almost violently masculine, shot through with heartbreaking delicacy of feeling’ Robert Dessaix ‘Flanagan imbues this most Australian of stories with a middle European sensibility found in the reserve of characters in Milan Kundera’s writings . . . [he] tells an immortal story of faith and hope, its loss and rebirth . . . The Sound of One Hand Clapping is destined to be a classic’ Sydney Herald Sun
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First Sentence
ALL THIS YOU WILL come to understand but can never know, and all of it took place long, long ago in a world that has since perished into peat, in a forgotten winter on an island of which few have ever heard. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
ALL THIS YOU WILL come to understand but can never know, and all of it took place long, long ago in a world that has since perished into peat, in a forgotten winter on an island of which few have ever heard. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bojan Buloh isn't a cheery bloke. A "reffo wog" [immigrant from Southern Europe] in Tasmania, he lives a disenchanted life. His taxing job is meaningless, his quarters squalid, his friends and co-workers equally hopeless. His wife, Maria, has disappeared into a blizzard, leaving him with three-year-old Sonja.
Bojan's grief at the loss of Maria is compounded by memories of his early years. As a young Yugoslav partisan messenger, he witnessed war in all its viciousness. These aren't the fond childhood recollections of most of us. In Tasmania, he confronts the realities of immigrant life - exploitation, scornful neighbours, reduced status and few opportunities. A lesser man might cave in under such pressures, but Bojan is a tough bloke. Being tough, however, makes him neither happy nor successful. He survives with the help of the bottle, all the while expressing his resentment at the vagaries of his life. Some of that resentment falls, as it must, on Sonja. She represents the missing Maria.
Maria Bull's fading into a snowy Tasmanian night triggered dark guilt in Sonja - which she carries through her life. Their shared grief doesn't bring Sonja and Bojan closer. His drinking and violence only compounds Song's sense of detachment. She withdraws, although the spark of affection for Bojan never quite expires. Fleeing to Sydney, Sonja tries to shed the past, living the present intensely. Her grief is little assuaged as she uses a succession of men to compensate for, in effect, the loss of both parents. The ember of regard for Bojan dims feelings she might hold for another man. Cruel, drunken, cynical as he is, Bojan remains the one solid aspect of her life. It is to this lodestone she returns at last, in an attempt to take charge of her life. If "it is written," she determines at last to do her own writing.
Reviewing Flanagan inevitably evokes the tired clichés - "powerful" or "intense." While both terms apply, neither sufficiently addresses the quality of Flanagan's writing. One phrase, rarely applied to today's writers is "clarity." Although the story of Sonja and Bojan Buloh is told through broken chronology, Flanagan is able to hold the reader's attention throughout the tale. Skipping from present to past in a narrative is too often a distraction, but Flanagan manages the feat with unusal precision. Given the depth of feeling presented, he deserves high praise for his accomplishment. His story disturbs, sometimes repels, the reader, but the tale is never false nor the events contrived. His writing contains no cliches, nor is it tired. Only the reviewer is guilty of those sins. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a story about the poor treatment of Eastern European immigrants to Tasmania.It tells of a tale of one families tragedy and the effect it had on them. This story is written with beautifully descriptive language.
Format:Paperback
A blizzard howls, but a mother walks into the snow abandoning her daughter to her drunken and often abusive father. The child shuttles between father and temporary minders in 1950's Tasmania. A bleak chidhood is punctuated with glimpses of happiness, until she is old enough to escape to Sydney. Thirty years later she returns with the hope of a new beginning.
The switches between the 50/60s and the 90s can be confusing, but the narrative is compelling, and the imagery vivid.The characters are mostly a sad lot, not surprisingly given their traumatic past in WWII Europe, but they are convincingly drawn. This reader was left wondering whether the survivors would eventually find some sort of happiness. 4 stars.
The switches between the 50/60s and the 90s can be confusing, but the narrative is compelling, and the imagery vivid.The characters are mostly a sad lot, not surprisingly given their traumatic past in WWII Europe, but they are convincingly drawn. This reader was left wondering whether the survivors would eventually find some sort of happiness. 4 stars.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Average
The language is quite cumbersome, which makes it hard to follow even with total concentration. The daughter also displays too much arrogance towards her father and is quite selfish... Read more
Published on 3 Jun 2001
beautiful story
This is a story of a dysfunctional family, written with snippets of the past and present, so you can see how and where the family went wrong and how they try to put it back... Read more
Published on 29 Sep 1999
Deeply moving
This novel is set in Tasmania, and is the story of Sonia Buloh, whose mother leaves her at the age of 3 years, never to return. Read more
Published on 11 April 1999
The read is as painful as the story
Sometimes one picks a book by looking at the cover and reading he review extracts on the back page. Sometimes you pick a gem. This is not. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 1999
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