Question 7
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4.2 • 77 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows.
By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Booker Prize winner Flanagan (Toxic) weaves strands about his parents, Australian history, and the atomic bomb into a mesmerizing narrative tapestry in this dazzling, one-of-a-kind memoir. Flanagan begins with a meditation on how his father was interned in a Japanese POW camp near Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb. He considers how the experience shaped his father into a man who saw life as a "great tragicomedy." He contrasts his father with his more passionate mother, and reflects on the ways their combined "life force" saw them through poverty and pain. His examination of their relationship leads him to the affair between British writers H.G. Wells and Rebecca West, and then to Wells's writings on the atom bomb. Further digressions delve into Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard's warnings against nuclear energy, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and Tasmania's colonial history; recurring themes of mortality culminate in a recollection of Flanagan's near-drowning at the age of 21. Lyrical prose ("He would smile wanly, his face turning inside out, a concertina of wrinkles compressing his eyes into wry sunken currants") complements the book's oblique structure, aiding Flanagan in his construction of a bracing dreamscape that blends fiction, family, and history to illuminate his captivating consciousness. This is masterful.
Customer Reviews
Thought provoking
Love, life, loss and synchronicity.
What did I really think?
I started out confused - this book seems to pull you in do many directions.
It lead me down paths I didn’t expect - drew me into researching/ looking into weird side lines … not something I’d experienced a lot.
Was captivated by many sections, and yet able to gloss over others.
I’ll let you work out which are your favourite sections … in the end I had several, and they were all unrelated to each other … weird, surprising and unexpectedly great after a funny start.
Give it a crack and see where it leads you …???
Absolute masterpiece
What an absolute joy this was to savour and read. It’s written beautifully and effortlessly, with so many passages begging to be dwelled upon and reread.