Book Review Wednesday by Al

Wanting
By Richard Flanagan (2009)

Review by Al

Wanting is a story of the desire to "be"; of death, of love and of the emptiness within the human heart which is so easily filled with a different kind of emptiness. The story follows the lives of Charles Dickens, Lady Jane Franklin and the Aboriginal girl Mathinna who was plucked from a Bass Strait Island by Lady Franklin and "adopted" as one of her own. Mathinna's story is a tragic one. And Lady Jane Franklin's experimental attempt to tame the young Aboriginal "savage" is as reprehensible as it is damnable.

Richard Flanagan's sentences are long and spindly and have a complexity which at times I wondered about. But on the whole I could follow the story easily enough. Baz Luhrmann's Australia was written in part by Flanagan and there is certainly a similarity between the far fetchedness of both stories. Not in a bad way. But you certainly know that you are not reading something which resembles history.


But in the end, as I closed and then put down the beautifully covered red book, I wondered if I'd got it. It didn't feel as profound as I felt it should have done. I enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong. I just thought it was lacking, wanting.

Thanks a lot, Al! Check out Al's great blog, Paradoxically Speaking.