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Serious writers have a way of getting under your skin, and like Don Delillo’s Zero K,   this novel takes a hard look at the way things are and doesn’t let the reader off the hook for a moment. If the satirical fable of Zero K centres on sleep as the answer to the woes of the world, Flanagan makes disappearance – of species, of body, of meaning – the heart of his message.   The Living Sea of Waking Dreams has a simple plot, one immediately relatable: three adult siblings gather around their dying mother and struggle to let her go. The protagonist, Anna, should hold the sensible middle ground once treatments to prolong Francie’s life become inhumane, but she is under the spell of the Terzo, a wealth manager who believes that money and influence can buy life. Anna’s other brother, Tommy, is a sympathetically drawn character -- a struggling artist, stuttering and sentimental. A dead fourth sibling casts a dark shadow: Ronnie, a teenage suicide, likely the result of his interactions wit