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NAIBA Notables
Wanting, A Novel by Richard Flanagan
Wanting
A Novel by Richard Flanagan
Grove Atlantic
ISBN-10: 0-8021-1900-X; ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-1900-1
May 12, 2009
Description:
Richard Flanagan's previous novels, such as The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Gould's Book of Fish, have earned him a place among our most inventive and important international literary voices. With Wanting, he delivers a powerful and moving tale of colonialism, ambition, and the lusts and longings that make us human.
It is 1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, a barefoot aboriginal girl sits for a portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island's governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilization-one that will determine whether science, Christianity, and reason can be imposed in the place of savagery, impulse, and desire.
Years later, somewhere in the Arctic, Sir John Franklin has disappeared with his crew and two ships on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified by reports of cannibalism filtering back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin's story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own life.
As several lives become joined by unexpected events and tragedies, Wanting transforms into a stunning contemporary meditation on the ways in which desire-and its denial-shape all our lives.
Bookseller review:
The word "wanting" is not only the title but is one of the characters in this incredible novel. Having never before read Richard Flanagan I was utterly taken with his imagination, sense of politics and incredible ability to make me think about the title throughout the book.
In this novel there is the wanting found in exhausted love (Charles Dickens's wife) and the wanting of its return on terms more appropriate to the body of a woman who has given birth multiple times. There is the wanting that is carnal: a need to fill or pretend to fill, what is empty. There is wanting for a better future, a better outcome. There is the wanting associated with the death of a child (or the death of the possibility of a child) and how that hole drives our associations. And there is the undeniable wanting associated with hubris.
I loved the play of meaning manipulating me to become witness to what was (and still is) the behavior of the colonizer. Ultimately, characters who are convinced of their wanting to do good and do, not just its opposite but its genocidal opposite, command this story and capture this moment in history as precisely as fiction is able. And finally, in the wanting to forget, characters are forced into remembering not just the horror wrought, but the presence of an artistic portrait of the horror. Amazing.
Richard Flanagan's Wanting needs to be read by everyone who has ever allowed for the possibility that first world governments are found … wanting.
Lucy Kogler, Talking Leaves, Buffalo, NY
Publisher support:
On numerous backlist titles in our Spring/Summer 2009 catalogue we are
offering a special additional 5% discount over the PGW annual discount
volume normally applied. We are extending this offer through May
15, 2009. All of our Flanagan backlist is included (see below).
It is available one time this season, through May 15, 2009. The store
will need to include the PGW/Perseus tock offer code of "GRBS" on the
purchase order to quality for the additional discount.
Death of a River Guide (9780802138637)
Gould's Book of Fish (9780802138637)
The Sound of One Hand Clapping (9780802137845)
The Unknown Terrorist (9780802143549)
Finally we are really excited about the sales of Donna Leon's new Guido Brunetti mystery, About Face. It has hit the Indie list and is #26 on the extended New York Times. With the economy as is, we want to help out a bit. We have another special offer for this book of an additional 5% discount for any retail order received for About Face (9780802118967) by Publishers Group West/Perseus Distribution (800-788-3123) between Thursday, April 23, 2009 to 5:00 p.m. CST, Monday, May 4, 2009. To qualify all orders must include the promotion code "EDILO.
More resources:
Reading Group Guide
Mini Poster
Shelf Talker
High-resolution book jacket
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