Richard Flanagan trained as a historian, and his novels have often emphasised the redemptive power of memory. For his characters, though, remembering is a strenuous business. There are traps to be avoided and barriers to overcome - an obstacle course of crying jags, guilt-ridden stupors, deathbed hallucinations. The frozen sea of the characters' inner lives needs vigorous axe work, and the truths that are revealed will usually be painful. Still, the past demands a reckoning in these novels, and comforting fictions have to be set aside - not least because, in Flanagan's books, it's the comforting fictions that cause most of the trouble.

LRB 31 October 2002 | PDF Download