REVIEW: The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

The title of Richard Flanagan’s new book, by itself, is a poem. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is a beautiful and terrifying novel intrinsically bonded to the catastrophe of our times.

Richard Flanagan

As an unending blaze decimates the nation, sending smoke and ash out far enough to reach other continents, Anna flies to Tasmania to be with her severely aged mother. Francie is dying but her children aren’t ready to accept it. Condemned to live in degradation and pain, she retreats from our reality through the hospital window into visions of chaos and delight.

First Anna’s finger disappears. It doesn’t fall off, there’s no amputation, it’s just gone. Soon other parts follow. No one seems to notice, moreover others go on unaware even of their own features vanishing. Anna’s connection to her family wanes, and as things worsen she banishes her pain with the dopamine tap of her phone screen just as Fentanyl buzzes through Francie’s collapsing veins. Anna’s life in Sydney dissipates, becoming increasingly futile, alien even, and all she has left to devote herself to is the project of her mother’s continuing non-death. Soon Anna, too, feels the pull of the hospital window.

I think this book will be different things to different people. For me it’s a novel of dying, disconnection and the end of our world. It’s strange, clever and impossibly well written. Hope lives in this novel too, but the reader has to find it. Flanagan questions language, truth and the possibility of genuine engagement in the 21st century world. It’s plain to see why he’s one of Australia’s most critically acclaimed writers.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams wasn’t a comfortable read but there was nothing extremely difficult or obscene to make it so. I think it’s simply uncomfortable to feel so seen by the author – to have your world projected back to you in such a perceptive and imaginative way. It was impossible to let go of this story, not even for an instant.

This has been an incredible year of reading for me and this small, moving novel is an absolute standout.

—The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.

This book is part of Booktoberfest, the festival of new books!

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

by Richard Flanagan

In a world of perennial fire and growing extinctions, Anna’s aged mother is dying—if her three children would just allow it. Condemned by their pity to living she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight.

When Anna’s finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her others are similarly vanishing, but no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into a strangely beautiful story...

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Ben Hunter

Ben is Booktopia's dedicated fiction and children's book specialist. He spends his days painstakingly piecing together beautiful catalogue pages and gift guides for the website. At any opportunity, he loves to write warmly of the books that inspire him. If you want to talk books, find him tweeting at @itsbenhunter