The Living Sea of Waking Dreams
RICHARD FLANAGAN
(CHATTO & WINDUS, 304 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • tel 020 7799 4064

Eminent Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for a novel about Japanese POWs. Previously, he’s tackled Sir John Franklin; a pole dancer; a convict required to paint fish. Not afraid, then, to push boundaries or shift genres. But we are in safe hands, and it’s just as well. With a less confident narrator, the bold premise of this novel might easily collapse.

Anna is an architect inspired by organic forms; but this is a burning land. Leaves are reduced to “tiny carbonised fragments of ancient fern … perfect negatives”. It is like “living with a chronically sick smoker, except the smoker was the world”. She’s not a particularly attractive character, and is aware of her failings – “she lacks something … some necessary humanity or compassion”. Her brother Terzo is a ruthless businessman – “he kept scrolling down as if his finger were a cat’s paw playing with a doomed songbird”. Another brother, damaged, stuttering, good-hearted Tommy, is relentlessly bullied. They are brought together by the long, painful dying of their mother, Frannie, a vital, feisty, open-hearted woman.