Interesting thoughts... I too was let down by the book. I keep a reading log blog (
ABOUT THE LOG | the reading log (book review) blog: the novel and novella, fiction and non-fiction.) and these were my thoughts on The Unknown Terrorist, below it were my thoughts on the far far far better Gould's Book of Fish.
The Unknown Terrorist:
I bought this book the day after I finished Flanagan’s previous novel Gould’s Book of Fish. I devoured it in a matter of days. On one hand this should be seen as a compliment, but at the end of it all I have to say that I wanted to like this book much more than I did. As for the flashes of brilliance so often seen in Book of Fish, Flanagan dazzled me in the first two pages with a powerful opening, from there it was downhill.
After the event, when turning back through the pages of platitudes from reviewers, I thought that I must have misplaced my disappointment. Flanagan has a deft hand a creating believable characters in a story that could have easily strayed from the realms of possibility, but it didn’t. Surely this must be Flanagan’s attempt to write an accessible thriller that could cut this frightening real plot through to the masses. Unfortunately, while this is an important story to tell, I felt it came across as a little heavy handed.
I have read many books which are worse than this one. It has many redeeming features and I did love Flanagan’s attention to detail around the streets of Sydney (the city where I live). Nevertheless, we are often hardest on the ones we love. To be honest, if I didn’t know better I would not have thought this was the same author as the one that delivered Gould’s Book of Fish. In fact, this book has not deterred me from his work, only excited me to chase down his others and see how diverse they are. And quickly.
Gould's Book of Fish:
This book ticks a whole lot of boxes for me. Flanagan’s craft is structuring a story within a story within a story is often daunting and complex but ultimately satisfying, even if you have to re-read a few passages for fear of loosing grasp. But like all good things a level of complexity is welcome. The depths of character and plot is the bedrock from which Flanagan has been able to build his post-modern structure, similar to the likes of Graham Swift, in which he questions history, its authenticity. Fertile ground from which I am always hoping to navigate!
The comparisons don’t stop there. Billy Gould is a self-confessed lier, think Herbert Badgery in Peter Carey’s Illywhacker. Furthermore, Flanagan’s writing for Gould has further similarities to Carey, consider The True History of the Kelly Gang. Or even, Flanagan’s use of Gould’s obsession unfolds in a novel told through 12 fish, think of Holland’s obsession in Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus which unfolds among many trees. But these comparisons don’t do this book justice. I don’t usually quote other reviews in my comments but I feel on this occasion it is warranted. The inside cover of the edition I have has two comments that I honestly believe capture the true essence of this work.
The first is from USA Today:
“Reading Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish is like visiting the backwaters of a strange land, wandering into a dark bar, and drinking all night with its resident storyteller, who is either brilliant or crazed or both. The morning after, safely back in your hotel, you wonder whether it was all a dream, and if it wasn’t, were any of the stories halfway true, and if so, which half?”
The second is from The Times:
“Forgery is the art of our time: because we live with the colourless, the virtual and the inorganic on an everyday basis, we need forgers to recover the dangerous, flawed and colourful entities of the actual world. Richard Flangan is a master forger…”