Gould's Book of Fish [Paperback]

Richard Flanagan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2002

Published in hardcover to outstanding acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize, Gould's Book of Fish is a marvelously imagined epic of nineteenth-century Australia -- a world of convicts and colonists, thieves and catamites, whose bloody history is recorded in a very unusual taxonomy of fish. Widely hailed as a masterpiece and a work of genius, it stands out as one of the best novels of recent years. Billy Gould was a forger and thief sentenced to life imprisonment in a penal colony in Van Diemen's Land -- now Tasmania. After six months he escaped and boarded a whaler for the Americas, but before long his adventures landed him back in prison. The prison doctor Lempriere utilizes Gould's painting talents to create an illustrated taxonomy of the country's exotic sea creatures, which Lempriere madly believes will assure his place in history and the Royal Society. Lost and re-created, destroyed and hidden, Gould's book finally resurfaces in the present day littered with scrawls recording his unutterably strange life -- part freewheeling picaresque, part tragicomedy -- and that of his country, a penal colony, settlement, and magical space populated by generals, visionaries, and madmen. Gould's Book of Fish is a tour de force that questions the reliability of history and science, and the substance of artistic creation. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it "a huge, phantasmagorical work ... as inventive and visionary in its reimagination of history as [Toni] Morrison's masterwork, Beloved." "Gould's Book of Fish ...is ... by turns bawdy and pensive, moving and abrasive, visionary and squalid, apocalyptic and confessional." -- Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post Book World "Flanagan's masterful balancing act between what we endure and where we prevail ricochets page-to-page at breakneck read with passion and compassion, from the rhapsodic to Rabelaisian." -- Gordon Hauptfleisch, San Diego Union-Tribune "Remarkable ... A serene, chilling vision of human life as comparable to the life of fish, 'swimming in vast coldness, alone.'" -- The New Yorker "A work of significant genius ... terrifying, exhilarating, and amazingly beautiful." -- E. William Smethurst, Jr., Chicago Tribune "Flanagan ... leaps beyond his country's history toward the biggest questions that love and language can pose." -- Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gould's Book of Fish, an extraordinary work of fact-based fiction by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan (Death of a River Guide) is a journey through the fringe madness of Down Under colonialism. Set during the 1830s in a hellish island prison colony off the Tasmanian coast, the novel plucks a real-life thief and prisoner, English forger William Buelow Gould, from the pages of history to act as protagonist-narrator. Through Gould's unique capacity to blend hyperbole, hyperrealism, and self-effacing honesty, the reader acquires a shockingly clear picture of daily torment on the island. Yet more remarkable is Gould's portrait of bizarre ambitions among prison authorities to further principles of art and science amidst so much misery. Key to such plans is Gould's talent as a painter and illustrator. The compound's surgeon, nursing hopes of publishing a definitive guide to the island's fish, leans heavily on Gould's ability to record the taxonomy of various species. Though Gould accommodates his masters, the manuscript, in his hands, becomes testimony to their perverse dreams of civilization and his own quick-witted survival instincts. Throughout, Flanagan never loses the well-imagined voice of Gould's candor or the character's dense descriptive powers, talents that translate into a thrilling text that reads like a blend of Melville and Burgess. --Tom Keogh --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Flanagan (The Sound of One Hand Clapping) has written a Tasmanian version of Rimbaud's Season in Hell, a mesmerizing portrait of human abjection and sometimes elation set in a 19th-century Down Under penal colony. A small-time forger of antiques in contemporary Tasmania finds a mysterious illustrated manuscript that recounts in harrowing detail the rise and fall of a convict state on Sarah Island, off the Tasmanian coast, in the 1830s. The text is penned by William Gould, a forger and thief (and an actual 19th-century convict) shipped from England to a Tasmanian prison run as a private kingdom by the Commandant, a lunatic tyrant in a gold mask rumored to have been a convict himself. The prison world consists of a lower caste of convicts tormented with lengthy floggings, vile food and various mechanical torture devices by a small number of officers and officials. Gould finagles his way into the good graces of the island surgeon, Tobias Achilles Lempriere, a fat fanatic of natural science, who has Gould paint scientific illustrations of fish, with the goal of publishing the definitive ichthyological work on Sarah Island species. In Gould's hands, however, the taxonomy of fish becomes his testimony to the bizarre perversion of Europe's technology and art wrought by the Commandant's mad ambitions. Civilization, in this inverted world, creates moral wilderness; science creates lies. Carefully crafted and allusive, this blazing portrait of Australia's colonial past will surely spread Flanagan's reputation among American readers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; First edition (December 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802139590
• ISBN-13: 978-0802139597
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Clever, complex, and intriguing. June 22, 2002

By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

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! Mary Whipple

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My Selection of the Year, So Far September 4, 2003

By Bruce Kendall VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In the reviews that are printed in the Grove Press Trade edition, I counted 22 renowned authors the critics cite with whom to compare Flanagan. The list is rather impressive and includes Joyce, Melville, Conrad, Rabelais, Borges, Hemingway, Marquez, Swift, Morrison, Pynchon, Sterne, Dante, Ovid, de Quincey, Heller, Dickens, Camus, Faulkner, Fielding, Smollet, Dostoevsky and, by inference, Peter Carey (the reference is to Carey's character, Ned Kelly in The True History of the Kelly Gang). Throw in a reference to Wuthering Heights (in terms of the book's lingering effect upon the reader's imagination) and you see the sort of playing field Flannagan is occupying. In terms of critical acclaim, the guy has arrived.

The praise is justified. Great novels introduce us to fully realized worlds, which burst forth from singular imaginations. This is just such a work. As T.S. Elliot noted, great literature also connotes, contains and reexpresses the great literature of the past. As you can infer from the number of references cited, this book acomplishes that.

Great works also contain great characters and William Buelow Gould, "sloe-souled, green-eyed, gap-toothed, shaggy-haired & grizzle-gutted" is as large and expressive a character as has been penned in recent literature. He's witty, expansive, loveable, colorful and as dimensional as they come. He's unforgettable, as are several of the other characters in the novel, most notably the penitentiary surgeon, Mr. Lempriere, in his passionate quest to become another Linnaeus, fellow convict Capois Death, who represents the life-force irrepressible. Towering over them all is the most surreal Commandant, once himself a convict, who through luck and subterfuge has assumed the identity of a British officer who perished in a shipwreck off the coast of Tasmania. He is rescued and taken back to the nearby penal colony, where he again lucks out when the old Commandant dies and there is no one else to replace him. He ultimately assumes absolute power and control over every guard, soldier and inmate in the colony and proceeds to engage all these unfortunate inhabitants in fullfilling his grandiose schemes. To accentuate his god-like stature, he has a gold mask fashioned for him, behind which his old identity disappears. His history and his fate, becomes inextricably linked with Gould's.

One word of warning, and it is the sort of warning that small children would be powerless to obey, but I know that I am writing to intelligent, mature readers here. Do not look at the final page of the book!! It will ruin the read for you, I assure you, and it is such a great read, you really don't want that to happen, do you? Remember the old adage about Curiosity and the fate of the cat!! Don't be led by your feline instincts!! Save the surprise for the right time! I know that I've just made that difficult for you, but it's just not worth it, I assure you! OK, now that that's settled, go get a copy of this treasure and prepare for a marvelous voyage.

BEK

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Liar's Tale March 28, 2002

By J. GRAHAM

Format:Hardcover

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.