GatesyRead

All of Richard Flanagan’s novels are different. Death of a River Guide takes a tour through a drowning man’s Tasmanian family history; Gould’s Book of Fish is Flanagan’s masterpiece – a historical tale of a convict forger and fantasist. Then there was Wanting set in Dickens’ London and Bass Strait; the just-ahead-of-its-time tale of political manipulation in the age of terrorism – TheUnknown Terrorist ; and finally a well-deserved Booker winner, T he Narrow Road to the Deep North where torture on the Thai-Burma death railway is set against the present life of Dorrigo Evans. The earlier novels are more obviously ‘literary’ (I haven't read The Sound of One Hand Clapping but its description sounds poetic).  Flanagan seems adept at a more popular mode in Terrorist and Deep North (or, at least, a more straightforward one). If  Carey is Australian progressive rock; and Winton is Australian folk; then Richard Flanagan is  a one-man Supergroup, comfortable enough in his skin to she