‘Gould’s Book of Fish’ by Richard Flanagan (2001) A Novel in 12 Fish
‘Gould’s Book of Fish’ is a novel about those convicts who were transported to Tasmania (then called Van Diemen’s Land) by the British government in the early 1800’s, those in charge of the prisons, and those aborigines who lived there. Over the course of 60 years, more than 165,000 prisoners were transported to Australia.
This book has a unique arrangement where each chapter is a fish painted by convict William Buelow Gould. These fish/chapters are called ‘Kelpy’, ‘the sawtooth shark’, ‘the striped cowfish’, etc.
In the first chapter, there is a very humorous modern story about some Tasmanians preparing fake antique Shaker furniture to sell to the rich fat American tourists. After this story, I settled in for a humorous ride, little realizing where I would be taken. Many of the scenes in this novel are laugh riots, often resulting from the vicious idiocy of the overseers back in England and the flat-out insanity of the prison authorities on Van Diemen’s Land. But humor is not Flanagan’s ultimate destination in this book.
One of the early chapters is devoted to the torture devices used on the convicts. These devices are ingenious in their cruelty. The elaborate descriptions of these made-up devices show the lengths to which the prison authorities would go to inflict pain on their convicts.
In one scene in the novel, the scientists back in England want some fresh specimens of skulls of the aborigines and request them of the prison authorities on Van Diemen’s Land. The prison authorities order the convicts to get the skulls, so the convicts go out and murder and behead thirty six aborigines, ‘blackfellas’ as Gould calls them. Then the prison Commandant boils the skulls in preparation for shipping them back to England. Insufferable politically correct prig that I am, I failed to see the humor in these beheadings or the chopping off of arms and legs or the other acts of humiliation done to the aborigines that are portrayed in this novel. These acts were probably done in real life all too frequently. It’s one thing to fool rich fat American tourists by selling them fake Shaker furniture. It’s a completely different horrific thing to chop somebody’s arm or head off.
I began to feel very uneasy about this novel. This novel was not turning out to be the rollicking,
good time boisterous picaresque Australian novel it originally seemed to be. Who can laugh at the matter-of-fact beheading of aborigines for the sake of a scientific study in England? At this point I was planning to write a review pretty much berating Flanagan for his callousness.
Only at about page 300 did I find out Richard Flanagan’s true purpose with this novel. This is when Gould discovers that the prison authorities have been keeping a sanitized version of everything that has been going on in the prison. This sanitized version of events contains none of the severe torture of the prisoners and none of the beheadings, chopping off of arms, legs, and heads, or other degradations the aborigines were subjected to. In other words, the official history of the prison on Sarah Island was a complete book of lies.
So despite its appearance, ‘Gould’s Book of Fish’ is not a hilarious rollicking jaunt through Australian history. It is deadly serious about the desperate, despicable attempts by those in charge to cover up and hide what really happened. If these books of lies become a part of the culture, it is as though the past did not happen and the people who were there never existed.
Flanagan makes no concessions to the readers of this novel. Even though Gould is one of the convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land, his writing is in very long and complicated sentences. The novel is supposed to be written by Gould back in the early 1800’s and in those days sentences were longer. At that time, writers wrote longer sentences connecting two or more thoughts together with the symbol ‘ & ‘. This can be difficult for modern readers. More than a few times I became impatient with the over-written, over-stuffed sentences in this book. Also, as I’ve indicated before, I was completely fooled as to the true nature of this novel for nearly 300 pages. By framing the book as a humorous picaresque story, I think it was Flanagan’s intent to make the readers uneasy and uncomfortable with what happens, especially to the aborigines.
In preparation for writing this post, I googled Richard Flanagan on the net. He has taken some courageous stands in Tasmania.
Tony's Book World 
Posted by whisperinggums on February 25, 2010 at 12:27 AM
Fascinating Tony, to read a review by someone who didn’t know Flanagan’s background. I loved this novel from the beginning but I guess that’s because I know Flanagan’s social conscience. The humour in the novel is clever. In fact, it’s a very clever book and one that I often think I should read again… I only had one criticism at the time and that is that I wondered whether he was almost too clever with his inventiveness, but I can’t recollect now, several years later, my exact reasons for that. A rather different book but in some ways an interesting companion to it is Matthew Kneale’s The English passengers.
BTW, this is a great review!
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Posted by anokatony on February 25, 2010 at 3:31 AM
Hi Whispering Gums,
Yes I’m familiar with Matthew Kneale; I’ve read both ‘The English Passengers’ and ‘When We were Romans’. Both were excellent. I found Gould quite a difficult book but well worth reading. Usually you don’t expect humorous books to be this difficult.
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Posted by whisperinggums on February 26, 2010 at 9:20 AM
Interesting comment Tony about humorous books. I think that is often the case, but I have read some humorous books that a quite a challenge. The most recent one I read was Flann O’Brien’s At swim two birds. That was a ride and a half…
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Posted by anokatony on February 26, 2010 at 2:00 PM
Hi Whispering Gums,
Yes, ‘At Swim Two-Birds’ is a challenging and humorous book. I found ‘Ulysees’ very humorous in places also.
I’m just happy that during this review, I never resorted to “In this book, Richard Flanagan has bigger fish to fry…” which I was tempted to do.
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Posted by kimbofo on February 25, 2010 at 9:00 PM
Whispering Gums beat me to it; I was going to suggest you read “Englsh Passengers”.
I love Richard Flanagan — definitely my favourite Australian writer.
I read this book ages ago, long before I kept my blog, although I do have a rather ludicrous “review” online, which tells you absolutely nothing about the book except for my reaction to it.
Interestingly, he has a brother (Martin) who is an Australian Rules Football nut — he’s a journalist on the Age newspaper in Melbourne. I’d been reading his columns for years (and I hate football, but appreciated his passion and writing ability) before I clocked he was Richard’s brother!
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Posted by kimbofo on February 25, 2010 at 9:02 PM
PS> That first piccie is Launceston (I’ve walked over that bridge before) but where is the second pic taken?
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Posted by anokatony on February 26, 2010 at 12:27 AM
Hi Kimbofo,
I use this site called ‘Photo Bucket’ http://photobucket.com/images/anne%20boleyn/ where they have huge numbers of public domain photos and people can upload their own photos. The info says one can use any of these photos on their blog sites. I searched for Tasmania, and there were 12 pages of pictures. Many of them were not very good quality, but there were a few that looked quite good. I used those, but have no idea where in Tasmania they were taken.
Thanks for the info on Richard Flanagan’s brother, Martin.
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Posted by kimbofo on February 26, 2010 at 8:36 PM
I went to Tasmania in 2005. I’ve got a couple of picture galleries online, which you might be interested in viewing
http://kimbofo.smugmug.com/Travel/Australia
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Posted by anokatony on February 27, 2010 at 1:09 AM
Those are wonderful pictures of Tasmania, Kimbofo. Thank you for sharing them.
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Posted by Osciceguesott on May 29, 2010 at 2:51 PM
Just want to say what a great blog you got here!
I’ve been around for quite a lot of time, but finally decided to show my appreciation of your work!
Thumbs up, and keep it going!
Cheers
Christian, iwspo.net
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Posted by anokatony on May 29, 2010 at 4:47 PM
Hi, Thanks for the kind words – I appreciate it. I will havr another entry tonight; stay tuned.
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Posted by Leen on May 2, 2011 at 4:55 PM
Hi, just a word of appreciation for your blog – I just discovered it through this review (now reading ‘Gould’s book of fish’)
and I definitely intend to look for more reading-tips …
so thanks all the way from Belgium,
Leen
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Posted by anokatony on May 2, 2011 at 5:32 PM
Hi Leen,
From Belgium? That is cool. I suppose that Richard Flanagan will be coming out with another novel soon, and I will be sure to read it. Thanks for stopping by and writing a line.
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Posted by Leen on May 2, 2011 at 6:44 PM
Hi Tony,
Belgium indeed (native Dutch-speaking)- This is my first Flanagan.
But promising so far – I’ll keep an eye on the new release !
thanks
Leen
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