Gould's Book of Fish

I recently completed a novel by Richard Flanagan entitled Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in 12 Fish (which a friend loaned me in exchange for letting him borrow Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman—an equally bizarre book). I was so thrilled with the book that I just had to write about it.

Gould’s Book of Fish tells the tale of William Buelow Gould, a convict living in the Sarah Island penal colony on Tasmania in the 1800s. Upon arriving on Sarah Island, Billy Gould’s rudimentary artistic skills are put to use, and he is forced to paint pictures of fish for one of the prison keepers. Though resistant at first, Gould eventually becomes obsessed with painting fish, and reaches a point where his sense of reality is blurred and he cannot help describing men in terms of fish and fish in terms of men.

Along the way, Gould meets a cast of highly idiosyncratic characters, including the megalomaniacal Commandant, the pervert Roaring Tom Weaver, an aspiring scientist known as “the Surgeon,” Gould’s secret lover Twopenny Sal, and the murderous pig Castlereagh—and experiences many misadventures in his interactions with them.

Though most of the locations in the book are real places and many of the characters are historical individuals, their roles in the book are almost completely fictionalized. Flanagan, through the “journal” of Gould, audaciously rewrites history, while steadfastly defending his right to do so—maintaining that what is presented in the book is the “true account,” which was covered up by those who wanted to keep the world from knowing what atrocities really took place on Sarah Island.

Adding to the bizarre character of the book, there are abrupt, intentional changes in voice (from first to third person and back again) and in point of view (from a limited to an omniscient narrator). The absurdly wonderful thing about these shifts is that the narrator specifically references them, and either explains (in the former case) or downright refuses to explain them (in the latter case).

However, Gould’s Book of Fish is so much more than simply a bizarre rewriting of history. In the midst of the strangeness, Richard Flanagan manages to make some profound statements about the nature of man. Fish is essentially a tale that exemplifies the heights to which man aspires, and the depths to which he more often sinks. It highlights man’s often-futile search for significance, and his struggle to love a flawed world and accept an even more flawed self. The seamless blending of the absurd with the profound is actually what, in my mind, makes Flanagan’s book so impressive. For example, early on in the book, Gould responds to the critics who denounce the crudeness of his work in this way:

"They diminish me with their definitions, but I am William Buelow Gould, not a small or mean man. I am not bound to any idea of who I will be. I am not contained between my toes & my turf but am infinite as sand.
"Come closer, listen: I will tell you why I crawl close to the ground: because I choose to. Because I care not to live above it like they may fancy is the way to live, the place to be, so that they in their eyries & guard towers might look down on the earth & us & judge it all as wanting.

"….[T]he truth is never far away but close up in the dirt, in the vile details of slime & scale & filth along with the Devil, along with the angels, & all snared within the earth & us, all embodied in the single pulse of a heart—mine, yours, ours--& all my subject as I take aim & make of the fish flesh incarnate."

Reading Level: 8/10

Accessibility: Moderate

Re-readability: High

Humor Level: Very dry. And absurdist.

Overall rating: 9.5/10

Best euphemism: “dancing the old Enlightenment” (you just have to read the book)