Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish (Paperback)

from TimONeill

A sprawling and grotesque post-modern masterpiece that's like a cross between Dickens, Joyce and Iain Banks. It's set in a fictional and often baroque magic realist version of Nineteenth Century Tasmania/Van Diemen's Land, with a combination of historical characters, allegorical figures and fanta...

from crystal_desert

Insightful and detailed examination of convict life and conditions during early settlement of Tasmania. Ponders all the important questions about Life and after, Love, Beauty, Art, Truth and Madness, Friendship, and Survival. Sad and evocative for how low life scum may hold within them and ponder...

from LukeS

Sometimes the buzz surrounding a book crashes through my everyday. Such is the case with "Gould's Book of Fish," a story ultimately about the brutal strength of empire and the truly callous way science applied itself in the service of accepted wisdom in the 19th century. The prison surgeon, an ob...

from crystal_desert

Insightful and detailed examination of convict life and conditions during early settlement of Tasmania. Ponders all the important questions about Life and after, Love, Beauty, Art, Truth and Madness, Friendship, and Survival. Sad and evocative for how low life scum may hold within them and ponder...

from yamanokevin

Book Review: Gould's Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan, Grove Press, New York, 2001, 404pp. The time when white convicts hunted aborigines for sport lies in the distant past of colonial Australia. With "Gould's Book of Fish," Richard Flanagan makes the point that it is far from easy to escape his...