![]() ![]() This becomes a metaphor for emotional loss, but it also seems that the more determined Anna becomes to keep her mother alive, the more of Anna herself disappears. But this is the least of her concerns because early on in the novel Anna notices that her finger has disappeared it is simply no longer there. ![]() A successful architect who left Tasmania to pursue her career, she has a complicated relationship with her son, Gus, who steals from her. The story is largely told from Anna’s point of view. The book’s central focus is on three adult siblings who do everything in their power to ensure their aged mother, 87-year-old Francie, is kept alive in a Hobart hospital after she experiences a bleed on the brain.īut there are divisions between Francie’s three children - Anna and Terzo, who want to keep Francie alive, and Tommy, who would prefer she slip away naturally - and it is these different viewpoints which provide the necessary tension to make this deeply thoughtful novel a proper page-turner. It’s a book brimming with irony, ideas and issues but is not without humour - or hope. Richard Flanagan’s latest novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, is an exquisitely written tale about preserving human life at any cost at a time when everything in the natural world is being killed off by human activity. Fiction – hardcover Knopf Australia 302 pages 2020. ![]()
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