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Death of a River Guide

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Aljaz Cosini, a Tasmanian river guide, is trapped under water, his body wedged between rocks in the Franklin River, into which he has dived in an effort to save a reckless rafter. "I have entered the realm of the fabulous, of hallucinations, for there is no way anybody stuck drowning could experience such things," he thinks, as many generations of his family history pass through his mind. As this remarkable narrative unfolds, it alternates between Aljaz's dying, first person memories of his family's past and his objective, third person observations about life in contemporary Tasmania. Through Aljaz's memories, the reader learns the sad history of the island, a former penal colony for the most hardened criminals, the site of total genocide for the aboriginal natives, a remote colony with little hope and no tolerance for differences. A bright boy, Aljaz himself has intentionally failed everything in school, because "by failing, Aljaz begins to fit in with people...there is a camaraderie amongst the ranks of the fallen....They expect to be failed, to be unemployed, to be pushed around, to know only despair."

This is a story of abject hopelessness, the misery of Aljaz's family continuing through the four or five generations we meet during Aljaz's final moments and culminating in Aljaz's own predicament. The author does not even hold out the hope that Aljaz himself will be rescued, choosing to confirm the death in the book's title, before the reader even opens the book. What unites the generations (and keeps the reader going) is the clear and abiding respect for nature we see throughout the book--for the power of the river, for the unique animals of the island, for the stories and myths of the old people--and the belief that there is a unity of man and nature. And Aljaz experiences the ultimate unity with nature in his death in the river, as he becomes one with the sea eagle who "carries the spirits of the ancestors."

The characters one meets in this book are memorable, as they survive the best way they can. The tales of nature and the mystical moments that Aljaz experiences are vivid and uplifting, a fitting contrast to the reality of life. The action on the river is realistic and exciting, and there is a thematic unity which connects the generations of the past with the action in the present. It may be self-defeating, however, to create a novel in which the reader is asked to become personally involved with a main character whose death is foretold from the outset. Though that confirms and reinforces the point the author is making about the hopelessness of Aljaz's life, it certainly makes this novel a depressing ride for the reader. Mary Whipple

I was interested to read this first novel by Richard Flanagan after reading his acclaimed novel "The Sound of One Hand Clapping". In going back to this earlier work I wanted to see if he was pursuing similar themes and if the writing was as compelling. It was. Here again was a master storyteller at work who refuses to release the reader until the last page has been read and the reader held in the grip of an idea that the broken in spirit will be redeemed.

This story of a man drowning beneath a waterfall provides the canvas to explore the emotional history of his family and by extension the emotional history of his island state, Tasmania.

perhaps i found this book enjoyable because i have been a river guide and also because i enjoy magical realism. the sense of time and space throughout this book captures not only a family history but the essence of a river itself, and being caught up in it. as i began reading, i found myself hating the main character for his apathy towards his own life. i resented that i would have to wait until the end of the book for him to finally end his miserable existence and drown. but then as i read on i wasn't so sure what i wanted for the main character. a very satisfying read.

Richard Flanagan has an almost unexcelled capacity to weave historical threads into his fiction. In line with many writers of the Australian scene, he deftly conveys his awareness of the Aborigine condition in this story. Despite his name, Aljaz Cosini, born far away in Trieste, yet manages to return to his ancestral homeland. Ancestral roots bear little, if any, sway on our monotheistic world. In other cultures, however, forebears are the foundation for existence, a tradition widespread and of extended duration. Flanagan's awareness of that cultural milieu is forcefully portrayed in this story of a man's final living moments.

Flanagan's method is subtle. We mourn for the drowning guide as the story opens. His fate is clearly inescapable. Strangely, he condemns neither his situation nor the river that is taking his life. The attitude is far from fatalism, however. His circumstance is opening a new realm of Aljaz' awareness. As he confronts the inevitable, Aljaz comes to perceive his ancestral roots. Visions arrive of events he could not have witnessed, yet bear no skein of fabrication nor the supernatural either in Aljaz' mind or in Flanagan's depiction of them. There are no deities or spirits here. Aljaz resents that at first - "visions ought be given you by divine beings, not ... marsupials and their mates". Yet these visions are events from the reality his ancestors experienced. They are also of those real people - his father, grandmother, and most importantly, his former girl friend and the child they lost. Flanagan accepts the Aborigine view of children - love them intently, but if they are lost, long-term grief is too debilitating a luxury. The white world didn't understand this view when they first encountered it, and it remains enigmatic even now. Aljaz meets death calmly after a tormented life, but it's not release from suffering he gains, but a fuller understanding of who he really is. He is joining with a lost heritage.

Describing Flanagan's style as "powerful" is frail praise. "Formidable" might be something of a start. This is not a book to rush through, or if done, one to turn back to again. Flanagan wants to confront you with the realities of history and become aware of the long-term effects of lack of cultural awareness. These aren't lessons acquired at one sitting. He knows there are deeply set roots underlying behaviour and this book is attempt to reveal some of these to us. He has accomplished this effort with vivid imagery and exemplary characterisation. We must applaud his effort with enthusiasm. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Death of a River Guide consists of the meditations of a drowning man. As he reflects on his wasted life and troubled family, he begins to understand his past. The novel's broad sweep encompasses a lot of the darker parts of Australia's history, but it's really of general interest and deserves more recognition in North America. Flanagan is concerned with universal themes of original sin, forgiveness and, in the end, redemption. He presents these themes in the context of the life, times and death of an individual. And he tells the story with such a restrained yet effective narrative technique. It's worth your time, if you can find a copy.

This is a fascinating, rich novel. You know what's happening from reading the title page: Our river guide, our narrator, Aljaz Cosini, is dying, from page one. But he takes rather a long time about it, with a wild, mostly brutal, series of flashbacks of life on this Earth. There are so many literary influences here that it would be a futile endeavour to name even a tithe of them. But the most obvious one, from the title, is the Faulkner of "As I Lay Dying." Above all, there is no redemption in this book. The frequent blurbs one sees on every other book cover these days it seems: "a powerful novel of redemption..." is turned on its head here: "A powerful novel of no redemption" is what this book truly is. A rare treasure!

Flanagan's "Gould's Book of Fish" is, I think, a slightly more accomplished and equally brutal and fantastic novel. But here, though it seems to me obvious that the younger Flanagan is in less control of his material, one almost is glad of it. One wants to applaud him for the risks he takes.

I really can't put into the review all the visionary tacks the work takes as our narrator slowly drowns except to say that the essential theme IS the visionary vs. the terrene. The quotes prefacing the work from William Blake and Rilke concerning the "spirit-world" are there for a reason.

The best I can do to give the reader a sense of what it's like to read this book is to quote one of the flashbacks when Cosini is seeing the ultimately fatal rafting trip through the eyes of the customers or "punters"- astute readers will notice the allusion to Pope in the first line:

"These people from far away cities whose only measure was man; it terrified them, this world in which the only measure was things that man had not made, the rocks and the mountains and the rain and the sun and the trees and the earth. The river brought them all these feelings, and of a night it brought worse: the most terrible blackness, the most abrupt and ceaseless noises of rushing water and wind in leaves and nocturnal animals moving. There were of course the stars, but their infinite space was no solace, only evidence of a further encircling world in which it was possible to be lost and never found and never heard."

A long, slow death of a book. Great Stuff!

This story made me cry more than any other. Flanagan breaks many "rules" of creating writing, which is to his credit. He tells a story without a plot. The characters were not attracting. He gives away the ending. But, he uses a delivery method of fantasy to tell a truth of the human condition. Brilliant! This is a book about loss, injustice, and suffering, with smatterings of love and tenderness. Beautiful. A most powerful scene takes place in a bar where Flanagan captures the heart and soul of what makes music so dramatic and driving for both musician and listener. This is not a happy book, just great literature. I read this after reading his "The Unknown Terroist," another good one with the same themes.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel Death of a River Guide by Richard Flannagan. Even though I found it to be very depressing and occasionally difficult to follow, it was extremely well written and told a captivating story about a protagonist that was surprisingly easy to empathize with, even though nobody in the world could possibly identify with him and his experiences. Every detail of his life illustrated by Flannagan prepared the reader for the inevitable death by drowning of the river guide, Aljaz. From the title of the book, to the selling of his birth caul and numerous other references to watery graves in the far off regions of the untamable wilds of Tasmania, nobody is surprised about the fate of our main character, though all of this foreshadowing makes it no less disturbing. Regardless, it really makes one want to go on a river rafting trip through Tasmania.

Death of a River Guide, by Richard Flanagan, depicts the drowning-induced hallucinations of Aljaz Cosini, a river guide devoid of emotion and passively longing for meaning in his life. Aljaz's death is what we initially notice at the beginning of the novel, however the novel itself is not about the act of dying, but the process of remembering, and the search for one's true self.

Although, I cannot attest to ever having drowned, the language that Flanagan uses throughout the book, especially when describing Aljaz's drowning is phenomenal. The scene's realism is magnificent and the emotions conveyed beautifully depict Aljaz's initial terror and final acceptance regarding his fate. We see Flanagan's skill as a writer throughout the novel. Two instances which were especially well written were the scene where Derek, one of Aljaz's clients (or "punters" as he refers to them" is hanging off the edge of a cliff, facing death---Derek's fear is palpable. Overall, the language is elegant, yet easy to read.

One thing that this book is able to do, which is rare in any novel, is to make the emotions felt by the characters accessible to the reader. When Aljaz's daughter's death is described, the sheer agony felt by him and the child's mother, Couta Ho, is not only noticeable, but also overwhelming for the reader.

In Aljaz's remembrance of his ancestors, the true focus of the book materializes. Aljaz is searching for himself. He does not know who he is, or where he came from. His family's ancestry is a sore subject and from an early age, Aljaz was told that he came from upstanding, white, free settlers. It is only at the end of the novel that Aljaz realizes his blood is Aboriginal. Flanagan does an excellent job of setting up numerous contrasts throughout the book to portray Aljaz's struggle to find himself. For example, the Christian and Aboriginal imagery combine to form a confusing self-image for Aljaz.

Death of a River Guide is a phenomenal novel that tells an incredible story of a man's quest to both escape his past and find himself. The universal themes, of family, love, and death engross the reader in Aljaz's tragic demise and allow the reader to put him or herself in Aljaz's place, drowning beneath a storm of turbulent water. Flanagan forces the reader to ask the question, "If I was drowning, what visions would I see?" The final moral of acceptance of one's self leaves a lasting image with the reader. This is a phenomenal novel and I would recommend it to all.

Aljaz Cosini, a half-Tasmanian, half-Slovenian thirty-something raft guide, is drowning. This is no secret; from the very title, the reader knows the narrator and protagonist of Richard Flanagan's novel is dying. But this novel is not truly about his death in the river, but his waking death--the emptiness and fear he has felt longer than he can remember.

Told with precision and stunning imagery, this lively narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to events as long past as the conception of Aljaz's great-great-grandmother, through the rape of an Aboriginal woman by a sealer. These flashbacks are a result of visions he is having, which he cannot control. In his visions, he sees all sides of the story, not just the ones experienced by himself or his relatives, which lends an air of enlightenment to his second-times-around. Only in visions can he understand why things happened the inevitable way they did--and the irony is not lost on Aljaz when people say things they immediately regret or do things for no apparent reason that only harm others around them.

The motifs of river and death are omnipresent, but so too is a feeling of having misstepped; one dominant tragedy sets the life course of each character. This sets a rather ominous tone for much of this book about Tasmania, wrested violently from its original inhabitants: Mistakes were made--not necessarily through ill will--and no real reparations can be made for them. Peace comes with death, for only in dying do Flanagan's characters escape to the ancestral home, where all is as it should be. And even death comes with a moral ambivalence.

Comical, tragic, surreal, and philosophical, Death of a River Guide is a gem. A truly fun read, for lovers of all rivers and anyone interested in Australia.