Book Review

Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish

Grove Press, 404 pp., $27.50

You couldn't be faulted for thinking that Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan has water on the brain. His follow-up to last year's tour de force Death of a River Guide is Gould's Book of Fish, a bawdy historical novel that focuses primarily on Sarah Island, a 19th-century Australian penal colony. And while his two books are not directly related in any strict sense, the fact remains that they share certain, um ... aquatic proclivities, reflecting both the metaphorical and literal influences various tides and currents have on their island-dwelling protagonists. In his latest, Flanagan revisits many of the thematic preoccupations of his previous novel, especially Tasmania's colonial history and the legacy of European racism, not to mention the protagonist's quest for self-knowledge -- or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Our presumptive hero, in this case, is William Buelow Gould, a convict facing a life sentence, whose rambling memoir turns up as a story within a story, which in turn takes up nearly the whole of this bizarrely comic work. In one of many twists, Flanagan kicks things off by introducing us to an admitted forger who claims to have found Gould's original Book of Fish in an antique trunk, but who cannot get anybody to verify its authenticity. This lack of narrative reliability, in turn, is compounded by the fact that Gould also admits to being a con artist and forger, so when Flanagan turns to telling his story, the reader must decide whether to believe the diary is real and, if so, whether in the end Gould's tale can be trusted. Given the novel's satirical tone and the outrageous stories captured on these pages, Flanagan allows the reader to be borne along without becoming too bogged down, but questions of candor and intent persist throughout the book, echoing like small waves lapping at the shore.

To hear Gould tell it, his work as a counterfeiter draws the attention of the penal colony's surgeon, who enlists his help in documenting the fish of the South Pacific in a "most scientifick" manner by painting them. As a result, despite his imprisonment, Gould moves with relative freedom through the various echelons of humanity on Sarah Island, and as he becomes more adept at capturing the likenesses of his piscine subjects, Gould also begins to recognize the profound impact of abuse enacted not just on his fellow inmates, but on the indigenous "blackfellas" and on Van Diemen's Land -- now Tasmania -- itself. Unfortunately, Flanagan misfires by coating most of Gould's account with a quasi-humorous patina ill-suited to the rapes, buggery, and overwhelming cruelty captured in many of his journals. Certainly, Flanagan remains a novelist to be reckoned with, but he would do well to keep in mind that fiction should be more than just a vehicle to practice telling lies.