Customer Reviews

Wanting

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Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan emphasizes, through his ambiguous title, two of the most contradictory characteristics of Queen Victoria's reign---the "wanting," or desire, to conquer other lands and bring "civilization" to them, and the "want," or lack, of empathy and respect for the people and cultures which they deliberately destroy in the process. The same contradictory characteristics are also reflected in personal relationships: desire is considered "uncivilized," something to be overcome, though men routinely indulge their passions with those far "beneath" them. These ideas provide the thematic underpinning of this novel.

The novel opens in 1839, as a preacher, overseeing a small group of wretched aborigines exiled from Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania) to Flinders Island, is mystified by the increasingly "monstrous deaths" of the people under his "protection." He has been careful to demand that the aborigines adopt western dress, eat a western diet, and follow a western way of life. When their leader, King Romeo, dies an agonizing death, the Protector saws off his head for further study by British scientists. Ten pages (and fifteen years) later, Lady Jane Franklin, wife of Sir John Franklin, the former Governor of Van Dieman's Land, is in London, trying to raise money for new expeditions to the Arctic to discover the fate of her explorer husband, his ships, and their crews, lost for nine years. She has displayed the skull of King Romeo to phrenologists, who have concluded that the King was a savage, enslaved by his passions.

Ironies abound. Lady Franklin is frantic to find an influential ally who can help her quell the rumor that Sir John Franklin and his crew became so desperate during their final days in the Arctic that they engaged in cannibalism and other "savage" behavior. Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins, the two most popular writers in England during the period, answer the call.

As the action moves back and forth between Van Dieman's Land and London, Flanagan gives depth to the bleak picture of colonial life, creating an emotionally wrenching portrait of Mathinna, orphaned child of King Romeo, as she is wrested from her countrymen on Flinders Island and brought into the home of the ambitious Lady Jane Franklin to be "civilized." He creates, in London, a parallel character study of Charles Dickens, who, though miserable in his marriage, believes that "we all have appetites and desire," but that "only the savage agrees to sate them." Throwing himself into his work to stay sane, he finds himself, ironically, attracted to one of the actresses in his play, The Frozen Deep.

The constantly changing time periods and revolving settings are sometimes challenging to follow, and the connections among the various plot lines are a bit tenuous (and may be historically inaccurate), but Flanagan creates memorable characters who reflect their cultures and their hypocrisies. Numerous parallels and ironies between the "civilized" British characters and the "savages" show the arrogance of power, while Flanagan's vivid descriptions of the characters' surroundings add to the sense of immediacy and bring the often brutal action to life. Life in Van Dieman's Land is ugly---pitiless---grinding down the characters (and the reader). Three years after the departure of the Franklins, life for all the people they have left behind is worse than it was before their arrival. An unusual novel which shows the damaging effects of empire-building on both the conquered and on the arrogant conquerors, Wanting makes the reader understand why the surviving aborigines ultimately believe "the world was not run by God but by the Devil." n Mary Whipple

Gould's Book of Fish, Flanagan's masterpiece, 2001, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
The Unknown Terrorist: A Novel, 2006.
Sound of One Hand Clapping, 1997.
Death of a River Guide: A Novel, 1994.

This extraordinary novel is framed by the death of two children. Near the beginning, in 1851, Charles Dickens' ninth and youngest child Dora dies while her father is speaking on behalf of a theatrical charity. A few pages later there is reference to the death of another child, an aboriginal girl in distant Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) called Mathinna. The book proceeds in alternating chapters in two converging time periods, moving on from Dora's death and forward to Mathinna's.

The odd-numbered chapters begin in 1838, with the visit of the Vice-Regent, Sir John Franklin, to an island colony where the few survivors of the wholesale slaughter of aborigines in the earlier part of the century have been sequestered, many dying from unexplained diseases. His wife is charmed by the dancing of Mathinna, the seven-year-old daughter of the aborigine king, and decides to have her brought up as a European lady, thus cloaking her sorrow at not being able to bear children herself in the guise of a scientific and educational experiment. Mathinna's life over the next ten years traces an extraordinary parabola; she is a delightful creation, and the story of how she is alternatively feted and abused makes devastating reading.

The connection with the life of Charles Dickens is admittedly slim. By 1851, Sir John Franklin, the former Tasmanian Vice-Regent, has disappeared on an arctic expedition and is presumed dead. His widow enlists Dickens' help in clearing his name from charges of cannibalism. As a result, Dickens becomes interested in polar exploration and, with the help of Wilkie Collins, stages a play with an arctic setting, acting the leading role himself to enormous acclaim. In the course of rehearsals, he falls under the spell of a very young actress, somehow resisting his desire for her even as his own marriage is falling apart. The theme of desire and the mastery of desire is one thing that connects the two parts of the book, as is the relationship between public achievements and private passions. But the thematic connections are not always easy to follow. My experience was akin to reading two historical novels at the same time, enraged by one and intrigued by the other, but treasuring the time spent with either.

For a fuller account of the Tasmanian massacres, I would recommend Matthew Kneale's novel ENGLISH PASSENGERS, which also uses a multi-threaded technique. Flanagan's focus is personal rather than epic, taking the historical record (for most of these characters really existed) back to the small acts of concupiscence, misplaced rectitude, or sheer stupidity that lay behind it. His writing is exquisite, as in this description of Mathinna dancing in the streets: "part native jig and something of a toff's dance, half-hyena and fully a princess, queer, lost, belonging and not belonging." Or his farewell to Dickens, which goes further than anything to tie the two parts together: "And he, the man who had spent a life believing that giving in to desire was the mark of a savage, realized he could no longer deny wanting." Or the transcendent coda of the book in which the author, surely following the lead of Auden's great poem on The Fall of Icarus, places the whole tragedy as but one small incident in a vast landscape of simple everyday beauty.

1850's Van Diemen's Land - Tasmania and the ongoing war between the whites and the blacks is a war the Aborigines can no longer win. With the colonial government offering the last and only realistic option: sanctuary at Wybalenna, the outpost on the islands of Bass Strait in return for their country, it is here amongst the sad broken-down remnants of what was once a proud race that a man called "The Protector" tries to become their savior. But nothing that he did for them could alter the fact that the people who he had bought to God's light were yet dying in a strange way. When the famous polar explorer the newly appointed Governor of Tasmania Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane Franklin travel to Flinders Island, Lady Jane befriends Mathinna, a young aborigine girl initially under the tutelage of The Protector.

Entranced by Mathinna's dancing, her slow way of moving, so distinct and so poignant, Lady Jane transports her back to Hobart as part of a new kind of experiment. Perhaps they can somehow breed some of this "savagery out" of the wayward girl. Cementing Mathinna's introduction into Hobartian society, the Governor and his wife instill in her all that is virtuous in English civilization, along with a favorite red dress, uncomfortable court shoes, and the appointment of a tutor Francis Lazaretto. Unfortunately the marriage between Sir John and Lady Jane is on shaky ground with Lady Jane feeling faint and lost. Watching Mathinna she feels she understands the child, imagining her grief, her needs, and her dreams. Even as the Franklins fall ever-more in love with the girl, Mathinna can't shake the ways of her native world. She's a girl where freedom is running through wallaby grass, her bare feet on the wet mushy earth and the beliefs in the sacred spirit stories of her people, the spirits who could fly.

While the dramas of Mathinna and her strange involvement with the Governor and his wife play out amongst the balls and parties and society events of the young colony of Hobart, the town awash in visitors, old colonists, and prospective new free settlers, all the way across the oceans in England, Charles Dickens finds himself linked to the fates of Lady Jane and that of the faded actress Mrs. Ellen Ternan. Emotionally fleeing from his wife, Catherine, her very presence bringing on in him a wordless anguish, Charles's life suddenly becomes an object lesson in the control of his passions. Ironically, it is his best friends Wilkie Collins and John Forster, and his meeting with Lady Jane that resonate in an unexpected and as yet intangible ways with him.

This beautifully composed novel works on so many levels, especially as a subtle homage to the nature of unfilled desire contained in the private passions of Dickens, of Sir John and Lady Jane, Ellen Ternan, and mostly of poor Mathinna who finds herself exiled from both worlds as she steadily drinks herself towards darkness. Of course fate waits by to ambush Mathinna in what predictably becomes a sad and sorry life. Weaving into his characters an intricate web of personal demons, political desires, and an intense ambition, the harsh realities of a cruel world and that of Tasmania, and it's convict and aboriginal history (and also this reviewer's birthplace) are what ultimately drive this intense novel.

Certainly for the natives, the arrival of the British heralded a new world filled with the devil, for their part the white settlers considered the aborigines as pests and barbarous heathens who had turned away from God. At first, the narrative which constantly moves between Dickens's England and the events in Van Diemen's Land is a bit distracting, yet the sections with the world's most famous author do give an added weight to much of the presumed power and moral authority of the "mother country." But what is ultimately so formidable and tragic in this story is Flanagan's simple but gifted prose and his vision of a State and of a country forever on the cusp of change. Mike Leonard June 09.

Such great reviews but so boring. Wanting and desire are great themes, but Charles Dickens and Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin are not effective figures in a novel centered around these timeless and universal ideas. I did not care about these characters, and any meaningful connection between them seemed forced. This book wants to be ironic, but merely comes off as banal.

Synopsis: Wanting tells two stories. One is of a small aboriginal girl, Mathinna, in Tasmania in 1839, and the other is of Charles Dickens, 20 years later. What binds them together is Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. John Franklin is the new Governor of Tasmania, and he and his wife 'adopt' Mathninna as a scientific experiment to see if a 'savage' can be made 'civilised'. 20 years later, John is missing on a failed polar expedition, rumored to have succumbed to cannibalism in an effort to survive before dying. Lady Jane hires Charles Dickens to write an article discrediting the rumor and restoring Sir John's reputation. Charles Dickens becomes infatuated with the idea of this frozen escapade and writes, and performs in a play based on the story, which changes him forever.

As I first started reading I found myself 'wanting' the book to get better, I was really struggling to maintain my interest. But then as I pushed on, and the stories are revealed I suddenly understood why this book was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. It begins with the quote 'reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life.' In Flanagan's Author's note at the end of the book he writes that Wanting is a 'meditation on desire - the cost of its denial, the centrality and force of its power in human affairs.'

Lady Jane says 'the distance between savagery and civilisation is measured by our control of our basest instincts'. All of the characters either succumb to or deny their 'base instincts' largely resulting in tragedy. Whether it is Sir John succumbing to his desire for Mathinna, or Lady Jane denying her pull to protect and love and cherish Mathinna, only damage is done. The history of the colonisation of Tasmania and the genocide of the indigenous people, the lines between savagery and civilisation is the perfect background for this 'meditation' on desire. The horror is encapsulated in scenes such as where Mathinna is forced to dance to provide entertainment for Sir John and Lady Jane while they eat dinner, and the Protector (of the indigenous population) presents Lady Jane with Mathinna's father's skull (having been removed, flensed, boiled and rendered) as a scientific curio.

While this book should not be read as true history, it contains a wealth of information about Tasmania and England which is fascinating. The stories are absolutely heartrending and is an example of the kind of book every Australian should read. Our history is not an easy one to reconcile, but recognition and acknowledgement of past transgressions is the first step.

This novel, set in the 19th century, contains separate but connected stories involving a number of historical figures and events. These include Sir John Franklin, Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania); his wife Lady Jane Franklin, George Augustus Robinson (Chief Protector of Aborigines), Mathinna, an aboriginal girl adopted by the Franklins, and the novelists Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.

A policy of removal of Van Diemonian aborigines has led to their near extinction. On a visit to Flinders Island, where Mr Robinson has established a settlement for aborigines, the Franklins are captivated by Mathinna. Lady Jane Franklin has no children of her own, and decides: `To raise one individual with every advantage of class and rank would be an experiment of the soul worth making, both for science and for God.'

Sir John and Lady Jane each become obsessed with Mathinna but she is unable to meet their idealistic needs and each, in their own way, abandon her.

Years later in England, Lady Franklin seeks the support of Charles Dsickens. Sir John's expedition to discover the North West Passage has vanished, and rumours of cannibalism are spreading. Dickens defends Sir John Franklin through `Household Words' and Collins writes `The Frozen Deep', a play inspired by Dicken's writing.
The Franklin's obsession with Mathinna, and Dickens's obsession with `The Frozen Deep' are each powerfully written. I found the story of Mathinna sadder than the story of Sir John's lost expedition. In my reading, Mathinna had fewer choices available to her once abandoned by the Franklins.

This is a beautifully told story made more interesting, perhaps, by its setting. The history it embraces is fascinating. This is a story about the tragic consequences of desire and ambition writ large on a global canvas.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Richard Flanagan can write and he can tell a great story. In Wanting both are on display in bucket loads. In lesser hands the concept of wanting would have been rendered clunky or forced but Flanagan renders it so exquisitely and with such heart that it made me feel like I had been given a gift, a unique perspective on a history - as bold and confident and right as any story could be told.

**spoilers***


Loved every moment of this exquisite prose, where not a word is wasted. The plot is compelling and haunting--I'm still thinking about Mathinna and how one moment's hesitation from another character spelled her doom. The link with Charles Dickens works well for me: he was engaged with the "idea" of Franklin the explorer who he knew nothing about, just as Franklin's wife loved the concept of a child only in theory.

I will definitely look for this writer's other books.

Richard Flanagan has presented an extremely well written story wrapped in historical details and facts about human nature. The book explores whether one should give in to desires and what outcomes may result from giving in or giving up. Through compelling characters who are emotionally complex (including Charles Dickens), the author is able to illustrate how human desire can clash with such obstacles as religion, upbringing, social standing, and laws. As I read the story, I found it very exciting to find out what the fate of the characters would be, based upon the decisions that they made. The book is short, but delivers a wonderfully written story and a subject to ponder long after the book is read.

Good historical novel. It helps to have some knowledge of Tasmanian history to put the story in context.