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Moartea unei călăuze pe râu
Aljaz Cosini, călăuză pe râurile tumultuoase din Tasmania australiană, conduce un grup de turişti într-o expediţie pe râul Franklin. Un om obişnuit, cu eşecurile, spaimele şi regretele sale, Aljaz dă dovadă de un eroism surprinzător atunci când un turist cade din barcă, punându-şi în pericol propria viaţă pentru a-l salva. Captiv el însuşi sub apă, într-un prag al râului, este asaltat de viziuni deopotrivă teribile şi fantastice, care se succed aparent haotic, într-o ordine aleatorie: istorii de viaţă ale unei suite de personaje pe care Aljaz le-a cunoscut mai mult sau mai puţin, zugrăvite cu mult realism şi expresivitate a limbajului. Scenele din viaţa de familie se împletesc iscusit cu povestea celor patru zile şi jumătate ale expediţiei pe râu, prilejuindu-i personajului principal reflecţii pasionate despre destinul tragic şi fragil al omului.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
164 people are currently reading
3507 people want to read
About the author
Richard Flanagan
32 books1,617 followersRichard Flanagan (born 1961) is an author, historian and film director from Tasmania, Australia. He was president of the Tasmania University Union and a Rhodes Scholar. Each of his novels has attracted major praise. His first, Death of a River Guide (1994), was short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, as were his next two, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997) and Gould's Book of Fish (2001). His earlier, non-fiction titles include books about the Gordon River, student issues, and the story of conman John Friedrich.
Two of his novels are set on the West Coast of Tasmania; where he lived in the township of Rosebery as a child. Death of a River Guide relates to the Franklin River, Gould's Book of Fish to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, and The Sound of One Hand Clapping to the Hydro settlements in the Central Highlands of Tasmania.
Two of his novels are set on the West Coast of Tasmania; where he lived in the township of Rosebery as a child. Death of a River Guide relates to the Franklin River, Gould's Book of Fish to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, and The Sound of One Hand Clapping to the Hydro settlements in the Central Highlands of Tasmania.
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October 28, 2020
5★
“Why did I take the job? From my present point of view, the perspective of the drowning man, drowning in consequence of having taken the job, this question is not without importance.”
Aljaz Cosini is wedged between rocks in the raging Franklin River in Tasmania, a river he knows well from guiding years ago, catering to tourists, “the punters”.
“They felt consumed by the river, felt that they had allowed it to chew them up in its early gorges and were now being digested in its endlessly winding entrails that cut back and forth in crazed meanderings through vast unpeopled mountain ranges. And it frightened them, these people from far away cities whose only measure was man. . .”
They have had rain, rain, and more rain, so the river is rising as he is stuck. His mind doesn’t so much wander as leap from visions to memories to dreams to old stories, as he squirms and freezes.
He discovers he’s revisiting more than his own memories and stories he’s been told, he’s actually ‘viewing’ his family’s history - seeing himself born, then back to ancestors, then back to his childhood, his adult loves.
“And I am not pleased about that, about the way the river is shoving my mind and heart about, pushing my body, forcing open parts that I thought closed forever.”
Tasmania was a rough, tough penal colony. The English eradicated the Aborigines (or so they thought), the convicts were slave labour, and those who were finally freed could never aspire to the exalted status free settlers felt they were entitled to.
“And what sort of future your children got if word gets out they got the taint? They’re as good as filth. There’s no future with that sort of past.”
So who is Aljaz Cosini, where did he get a name like that, where did he come from, where did he get that wild red hair? I liked the way the cigar-smoking Slovenian midwife who delivered him says his name. Aljaz. Not as I would have guessed.
“Sometimes I even fancied she took some pleasure from feeling my name gravel up her rutted and tarred throat to slowly billow from her bloated lips in clouds of smoke. ‘Ali-ush, Ali-ush, Ali-ush,’ she would incant like a nursery rhyme to no one in particular. . .”
He often refers to himself in the third person, as in this episode from his boyhood.
“While the other children’s eyes are fixed upon each other, his eyes stare at the sky. And I know what that child is feeling, not because that child is me, Aljaz, but because I am watching not only the movements of the boy Aljaz’s body now, but the movements of his heart and soul.”
As his mind does its magic, he begins to see things he’d rather miss.
“And now I am being washed into the Ho family past. Without wishing it, I should add, for frankly I have no desire to see any of it - but this newly acquired capacity of mine to witness the past means that the stories of the dead weigh like a nightmare on my still-living brain.”
Some of what he’s seeing from his parents’ and grandparents’ pasts may have been pieced together from clues he picked up as a child, but here they are full-blown, self-contained stories.
1940, Auntie Ellie and young Harry (his father):
“‘This is home, Harry,’ said Auntie Ellie, smacking the corrugated iron with the flat of a big hand. ‘Ripple iron, we calls it, best bloody building material this side of Gormanston. Don’t rot, don’t cost much, and always talks to you when it’s raining.’”
How well I remember the sound of that rain after a dry time.
Now, it’s 1946, and Harry is with Norry. Aljaz sees the piners, the pining gangs (whom North Americans called lumberjacks), those men who cut the magnificent Huon pines. And he watches his father lose a thumb!
The descriptions are vivid, lyrical, haunting, and raw.
“The gorge glistened green and black in its splendid solitude, a world complete unto itself. Nobody spoke. Norry pointed to driftwood caught fifty feet up a cliff face, and the piners’ blood ran cold with the thought of the gorge in flood, a wild demented cataract, an avalanche of white water sweeping before it everything unfortunate enough to be in this green and black world. They looked in excitement and in fear, in exhilaration and in terror, smelt the gorge’s heaviness, felt its power turn their legs to jelly and make their heads reel with the vertigo of imagination.
‘Bugger me dead,’ said Norry. They turned and slowly rowed back to their camp at the base of the gorge.”
Confusing? Yes. But gradually, moving between now and then and back again, the stories and the characters begin to create a whole, a whole of which he, and we, are a small part. This is not some kind of arty structural experimentation but a magnificent essay on what people have wrought on each other and on the earth.
“. . . my mind fills with a vision of when the English first arrived and the land was fat and full of trees and game. Had the loss begun at this time? When the English first saw plains so thickly speckled with emu and wallaby dung that it looked as if the heavens must have hailed sleek black turds upon this land, when they first saw the sea and the vast blue Derwent River rainbowed with the vapoury spouts of pods of whales and schools of dolphins swimming beneath. From that time on, each succeeding generation found something new they could quarry to survive.”
This is the loss and the quarrying so many people are trying desperately to halt. Everything comes back to the river, to the history of place and the pre-history of place. The old stories. The stories of old Auntie Ellie, who could whistle up the wind, gale-force.
“She’d make a high-pitched whistle, eerie really, and then the trees would begin to quiver and rustle, and before you knew it, there was a full bloody gale roaring. . .
Everyone grew quiet, for Auntie Ellie had the powers of the old people.”
The World Heritage area of Southwest Tasmania is wild and unique. The author was a river guide in his youth and nearly drowned at 21, I think he said. (I listened to an interview with him recently.) I have no idea if his life and the lives of others flashed through his mind as they do through Aljaz’s or not, but he said the experience changed him forever.
One of Australia’s biggest conservation successes was the campaign to prevent the damming of the Franklin River for hydroelectric power. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
The photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, by Peter Dombrovskis was used by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society in advertising against the dam's construction. By National Library of Australia nla.pic-an6631500-v, Fair use,
Amazing place, amazing first novel (1994). Twenty years later, in 2014, Flanagan won the Booker Prize with The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He continues to campaign for the protection of environmental and cultural heritage. I’m looking forward to his latest book, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams.
“Why did I take the job? From my present point of view, the perspective of the drowning man, drowning in consequence of having taken the job, this question is not without importance.”
Aljaz Cosini is wedged between rocks in the raging Franklin River in Tasmania, a river he knows well from guiding years ago, catering to tourists, “the punters”.
“They felt consumed by the river, felt that they had allowed it to chew them up in its early gorges and were now being digested in its endlessly winding entrails that cut back and forth in crazed meanderings through vast unpeopled mountain ranges. And it frightened them, these people from far away cities whose only measure was man. . .”
They have had rain, rain, and more rain, so the river is rising as he is stuck. His mind doesn’t so much wander as leap from visions to memories to dreams to old stories, as he squirms and freezes.
He discovers he’s revisiting more than his own memories and stories he’s been told, he’s actually ‘viewing’ his family’s history - seeing himself born, then back to ancestors, then back to his childhood, his adult loves.
“And I am not pleased about that, about the way the river is shoving my mind and heart about, pushing my body, forcing open parts that I thought closed forever.”
Tasmania was a rough, tough penal colony. The English eradicated the Aborigines (or so they thought), the convicts were slave labour, and those who were finally freed could never aspire to the exalted status free settlers felt they were entitled to.
“And what sort of future your children got if word gets out they got the taint? They’re as good as filth. There’s no future with that sort of past.”
So who is Aljaz Cosini, where did he get a name like that, where did he come from, where did he get that wild red hair? I liked the way the cigar-smoking Slovenian midwife who delivered him says his name. Aljaz. Not as I would have guessed.
“Sometimes I even fancied she took some pleasure from feeling my name gravel up her rutted and tarred throat to slowly billow from her bloated lips in clouds of smoke. ‘Ali-ush, Ali-ush, Ali-ush,’ she would incant like a nursery rhyme to no one in particular. . .”
He often refers to himself in the third person, as in this episode from his boyhood.
“While the other children’s eyes are fixed upon each other, his eyes stare at the sky. And I know what that child is feeling, not because that child is me, Aljaz, but because I am watching not only the movements of the boy Aljaz’s body now, but the movements of his heart and soul.”
As his mind does its magic, he begins to see things he’d rather miss.
“And now I am being washed into the Ho family past. Without wishing it, I should add, for frankly I have no desire to see any of it - but this newly acquired capacity of mine to witness the past means that the stories of the dead weigh like a nightmare on my still-living brain.”
Some of what he’s seeing from his parents’ and grandparents’ pasts may have been pieced together from clues he picked up as a child, but here they are full-blown, self-contained stories.
1940, Auntie Ellie and young Harry (his father):
“‘This is home, Harry,’ said Auntie Ellie, smacking the corrugated iron with the flat of a big hand. ‘Ripple iron, we calls it, best bloody building material this side of Gormanston. Don’t rot, don’t cost much, and always talks to you when it’s raining.’”
How well I remember the sound of that rain after a dry time.
Now, it’s 1946, and Harry is with Norry. Aljaz sees the piners, the pining gangs (whom North Americans called lumberjacks), those men who cut the magnificent Huon pines. And he watches his father lose a thumb!
The descriptions are vivid, lyrical, haunting, and raw.
“The gorge glistened green and black in its splendid solitude, a world complete unto itself. Nobody spoke. Norry pointed to driftwood caught fifty feet up a cliff face, and the piners’ blood ran cold with the thought of the gorge in flood, a wild demented cataract, an avalanche of white water sweeping before it everything unfortunate enough to be in this green and black world. They looked in excitement and in fear, in exhilaration and in terror, smelt the gorge’s heaviness, felt its power turn their legs to jelly and make their heads reel with the vertigo of imagination.
‘Bugger me dead,’ said Norry. They turned and slowly rowed back to their camp at the base of the gorge.”
Confusing? Yes. But gradually, moving between now and then and back again, the stories and the characters begin to create a whole, a whole of which he, and we, are a small part. This is not some kind of arty structural experimentation but a magnificent essay on what people have wrought on each other and on the earth.
“. . . my mind fills with a vision of when the English first arrived and the land was fat and full of trees and game. Had the loss begun at this time? When the English first saw plains so thickly speckled with emu and wallaby dung that it looked as if the heavens must have hailed sleek black turds upon this land, when they first saw the sea and the vast blue Derwent River rainbowed with the vapoury spouts of pods of whales and schools of dolphins swimming beneath. From that time on, each succeeding generation found something new they could quarry to survive.”
This is the loss and the quarrying so many people are trying desperately to halt. Everything comes back to the river, to the history of place and the pre-history of place. The old stories. The stories of old Auntie Ellie, who could whistle up the wind, gale-force.
“She’d make a high-pitched whistle, eerie really, and then the trees would begin to quiver and rustle, and before you knew it, there was a full bloody gale roaring. . .
Everyone grew quiet, for Auntie Ellie had the powers of the old people.”
The World Heritage area of Southwest Tasmania is wild and unique. The author was a river guide in his youth and nearly drowned at 21, I think he said. (I listened to an interview with him recently.) I have no idea if his life and the lives of others flashed through his mind as they do through Aljaz’s or not, but he said the experience changed him forever.
One of Australia’s biggest conservation successes was the campaign to prevent the damming of the Franklin River for hydroelectric power. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
The photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, by Peter Dombrovskis was used by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society in advertising against the dam's construction. By National Library of Australia nla.pic-an6631500-v, Fair use,
Amazing place, amazing first novel (1994). Twenty years later, in 2014, Flanagan won the Booker Prize with The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He continues to campaign for the protection of environmental and cultural heritage. I’m looking forward to his latest book, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams.
December 30, 2023
I seem to be reading Richard Flanagan backwards in order of his books, as this is in fact his first major novel, first published back in 1994. You wouldn’t know that this is a debut novel, though, since Flanagan’s eloquence and narrative power are already perfectly formed.
The story is set in one of the world’s most beautiful regions, southwestern Tasmania, around the town of Strahan, Macquarie Harbour, and the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. It revolves around Aljaz Cosini, an out-of-condition and out-of-luck river guide, returning to his original job after many years of wandering. He takes a party of ecotourists on a boat trip of the Franklin river but things start to go wrong very soon. Incessant rain causes the river to rise and the descents of the rapids become dangerous and precarious. Eventually Aljaz and his fellow river guide, ‘The Cockroach’, loose control and disasters strike…
The story is told as a series of visions, which Aljaz experiences as he is drowning slowly after an unsuccessful attempt to save one of his ‘punters’. All through the book, which starts with the party taking off, the tension builds as the conditions deteriorate on the river, leading up to the fateful moment. The visions Aljaz experiences concern not only his own life, but the lives of his ancestors as well…
The overriding theme of this book, as I see it, is loss. Personal, societal, and even environmental loss. Many of Aljaz’s visions concern his own life, which is marred by the tragic loss of a child, soon followed by the estrangement from his wife, another loss. Many of the tales of his ancestors are also distinguished by loss, including the loss of life and dignity by the indigenous peoples of Tasmania, the loss of hope for the unfortunate convicts of the erstwhile and notorious penal station on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour. Furthermore, the multifaceted story deplores the loss of environmental biodiversity, including the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine; now extinct), many of Tasmania’s distinctive plant species (especially the fabulous Huon pine; now protected), and not least the many beautiful waterways ruined by Tasmania’s infamous hydroelectric scheme.
Verdict: almost a masterpiece but some of the transitions between the visions are somewhat clunky. Also some of the language, although refreshingly original, is awkward, e.g. the use of ‘ought’ and ‘used’ as proper modal verbs (i.e. without the ‘to-infinitive’).
The story is set in one of the world’s most beautiful regions, southwestern Tasmania, around the town of Strahan, Macquarie Harbour, and the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. It revolves around Aljaz Cosini, an out-of-condition and out-of-luck river guide, returning to his original job after many years of wandering. He takes a party of ecotourists on a boat trip of the Franklin river but things start to go wrong very soon. Incessant rain causes the river to rise and the descents of the rapids become dangerous and precarious. Eventually Aljaz and his fellow river guide, ‘The Cockroach’, loose control and disasters strike…
The story is told as a series of visions, which Aljaz experiences as he is drowning slowly after an unsuccessful attempt to save one of his ‘punters’. All through the book, which starts with the party taking off, the tension builds as the conditions deteriorate on the river, leading up to the fateful moment. The visions Aljaz experiences concern not only his own life, but the lives of his ancestors as well…
The overriding theme of this book, as I see it, is loss. Personal, societal, and even environmental loss. Many of Aljaz’s visions concern his own life, which is marred by the tragic loss of a child, soon followed by the estrangement from his wife, another loss. Many of the tales of his ancestors are also distinguished by loss, including the loss of life and dignity by the indigenous peoples of Tasmania, the loss of hope for the unfortunate convicts of the erstwhile and notorious penal station on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour. Furthermore, the multifaceted story deplores the loss of environmental biodiversity, including the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine; now extinct), many of Tasmania’s distinctive plant species (especially the fabulous Huon pine; now protected), and not least the many beautiful waterways ruined by Tasmania’s infamous hydroelectric scheme.
Verdict: almost a masterpiece but some of the transitions between the visions are somewhat clunky. Also some of the language, although refreshingly original, is awkward, e.g. the use of ‘ought’ and ‘used’ as proper modal verbs (i.e. without the ‘to-infinitive’).
May 17, 2024
Could you imagine that you knew you were dying and that your life would flash before you in the time it takes you to drown?
If you could, would you allow your mind to take you back to the traumatic realities of your families past?
If you could, would you allow yourself to view the intimate details of your conception and birth?
If you could, would you allow the image of the deaths of those nearest and dearest to wash through your mind?
Would you allow your death to be a therapeutic cleansing?
Would all this dissociation from your present trauma give your mind a transcendental focus that brings an inner peace?
If you could, would you allow your mind to take you back to the traumatic realities of your families past?
If you could, would you allow yourself to view the intimate details of your conception and birth?
If you could, would you allow the image of the deaths of those nearest and dearest to wash through your mind?
Would you allow your death to be a therapeutic cleansing?
Would all this dissociation from your present trauma give your mind a transcendental focus that brings an inner peace?
December 19, 2013
There shouldn't be much suspense in a book called "Death of a River Guide," but the quickened pulse of Richard Flanagan's first novel is just part of its magic. The story takes place during the four or five minutes it takes Aljaz Cosini to drown. That's a dangerous position for narrator and author. As Benjamin Franklin said of hanging, it concentrates the mind.
In Aljaz's case, having his head stuck between rocks in a raging river allows him to concentrate on his fractured life. "Death is not the complex matter life is," he thinks in an oddly wry voice. While his lungs fill with water, his mind surges with memories - not just his own, but visions that swirl through 200 years of ancestral struggle on the island of Tasmania, all the way back to the rape that blended his white and Aboriginal blood.
In prose as startling and strange as the platypus and the wallaby, Flanagan moves through the sad life of one inconsequential man to reveal the rich history of an entire country. "I am not pleased about the way the river is shoving my mind and heart about," he thinks, "pushing my body, forcing open parts that I thought closed forever."
Once, Aljaz had a reputation "for running the big ones, the rapids no one else would run, and making it through." But that was before the death of his infant daughter dropped him into a decade of grinding sorrow.
Now, the thought of shepherding tourists down a dangerous river seems like an act of desperation. He's out of practice and out of shape, but he's also out of money, and he had hoped this trip would be thrilling enough to help him swallow his own despair.
In a voice so frank it can make you laugh or wince, Aljaz recalls the trip's first six days. From his dying vantage, he can see his talents and faults, his role as guide and comedian, disciplinarian and nurse, loudly encouraging his punters, quietly mocking them, always attending to the group's mental climate despite the fog of his own fear. Passing through this novel may be as close as you can get to shooting deadly rapids without getting wet - or killed.
The mythos here is wholly Australian, but Flanagan uses rafting as effectively as Hemingway used bull fighting to explore the existential struggle to act nobly in the face of death. "In an age when everything can mean anything," he thinks, "perhaps it is only possible to exist as a cipher, as a thin, fragile outline of a hope etched across an infinity of madness."
Suddenly, his vision shifts, and he sees his father as a young man rowing through the rainforested wilderness 50 years earlier. Then, another scene arises, when his father was a child, sitting through his grandmother's funeral on the day the church walls bled. From another time, he watches his great-grandfather hack a fellow prisoner to death and eat him.
But these visions are no more painful than the memories of his own brief marriage. He's spent 10 lonely years trying to anesthetize his grief without much success. The blended panorama of past and present is sometimes too lush or too agonizing to absorb - simultaneously bombastic, outrageous, orphic, and surreal.
"The past isn't ever over," Aljaz thinks as he hears his relatives deny their connection to the convicts and natives who writhed beneath British oppression. All down his family tree, they've thirsted for peace they could never drink.
Their stories are saturated with sadness, but they never dissolve into a pool of undifferentiated despair. Part of Flanagan's genius is the way he individualizes these characters with their own wildly peculiar struggles. Aljaz's dying visions reclaim them from the darkness of his past and the shiny gloss of Australian history.
Recalling Ecclesiastes' ancient lament, Aljaz thinks, "A name, be it a good or a bad name, washes away quicker than the peat that gathers in the potholes in the river rock, there to briefly swirl for an hour or two before disappearing, to be ground into the mass fecund nothingness of river loam."
The bracing power of this story works against that dark appraisal, and Aljaz's thick cynicism is contradicted by the desperate love that generates so much agony for him.
"The Death of a River Guide" is the birth of a daring talent.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0308/p1...
In Aljaz's case, having his head stuck between rocks in a raging river allows him to concentrate on his fractured life. "Death is not the complex matter life is," he thinks in an oddly wry voice. While his lungs fill with water, his mind surges with memories - not just his own, but visions that swirl through 200 years of ancestral struggle on the island of Tasmania, all the way back to the rape that blended his white and Aboriginal blood.
In prose as startling and strange as the platypus and the wallaby, Flanagan moves through the sad life of one inconsequential man to reveal the rich history of an entire country. "I am not pleased about the way the river is shoving my mind and heart about," he thinks, "pushing my body, forcing open parts that I thought closed forever."
Once, Aljaz had a reputation "for running the big ones, the rapids no one else would run, and making it through." But that was before the death of his infant daughter dropped him into a decade of grinding sorrow.
Now, the thought of shepherding tourists down a dangerous river seems like an act of desperation. He's out of practice and out of shape, but he's also out of money, and he had hoped this trip would be thrilling enough to help him swallow his own despair.
In a voice so frank it can make you laugh or wince, Aljaz recalls the trip's first six days. From his dying vantage, he can see his talents and faults, his role as guide and comedian, disciplinarian and nurse, loudly encouraging his punters, quietly mocking them, always attending to the group's mental climate despite the fog of his own fear. Passing through this novel may be as close as you can get to shooting deadly rapids without getting wet - or killed.
The mythos here is wholly Australian, but Flanagan uses rafting as effectively as Hemingway used bull fighting to explore the existential struggle to act nobly in the face of death. "In an age when everything can mean anything," he thinks, "perhaps it is only possible to exist as a cipher, as a thin, fragile outline of a hope etched across an infinity of madness."
Suddenly, his vision shifts, and he sees his father as a young man rowing through the rainforested wilderness 50 years earlier. Then, another scene arises, when his father was a child, sitting through his grandmother's funeral on the day the church walls bled. From another time, he watches his great-grandfather hack a fellow prisoner to death and eat him.
But these visions are no more painful than the memories of his own brief marriage. He's spent 10 lonely years trying to anesthetize his grief without much success. The blended panorama of past and present is sometimes too lush or too agonizing to absorb - simultaneously bombastic, outrageous, orphic, and surreal.
"The past isn't ever over," Aljaz thinks as he hears his relatives deny their connection to the convicts and natives who writhed beneath British oppression. All down his family tree, they've thirsted for peace they could never drink.
Their stories are saturated with sadness, but they never dissolve into a pool of undifferentiated despair. Part of Flanagan's genius is the way he individualizes these characters with their own wildly peculiar struggles. Aljaz's dying visions reclaim them from the darkness of his past and the shiny gloss of Australian history.
Recalling Ecclesiastes' ancient lament, Aljaz thinks, "A name, be it a good or a bad name, washes away quicker than the peat that gathers in the potholes in the river rock, there to briefly swirl for an hour or two before disappearing, to be ground into the mass fecund nothingness of river loam."
The bracing power of this story works against that dark appraisal, and Aljaz's thick cynicism is contradicted by the desperate love that generates so much agony for him.
"The Death of a River Guide" is the birth of a daring talent.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0308/p1...
October 2, 2012
Am I to live? Is my life to be saved? Am I finally to be made visible? Other people who nearly die go down a tunnel and see a great light at the end. But all I have seen are people, the whole lot of them, swirling, dirty, smelly, objectionable and ultimately lovable people, and, I think, if it is to be my misfortune to return into the lamentable physical vessel that has been my body, it is them – these people in the kitchens and office blocks and suburbs and pink leisure suits – that I must make my peace with.
Aljaz Cosini is the river guide in the title. He is drowning, although we don’t learn how he came to be underwater till near the end of this novel. As the river covers him, his life – and Australia’s history – swirls around him. Life is the cruellest of boxers, we are told.
One of the seductions of Goodreads is the ‘finds’ – an author or a book that we wouldn’t have known about but for our scramblings over the profiles of others, the reviews, the to-be-read lists. That is how I found Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by this same author. I forget now whom to thank. But I loved that book enough to want to read the whole Richard Flanagan catalogue.
This, his debut, is not as good as Gould’s, yet it clearly shows the promise of enormous talent. There is inventiveness, though shifting from the third person to the first person in the same sentence is something he needs to get over. There is purpose, in the telling of history and the peeling of the individual soul. But there is also just some damn good storytelling. Moments like this one when Aljaz ‘sees’ his mother, Sonja, dressing for a first date with his father, Harry:
”A man that would lead you to go to so much trouble over yourself can only lead to trouble.” She admonished Sonja. But before she left she sprinkled the inside of the top and waist of the dress with ground cloves. And cackled, “Fruit is best eaten seasoned.” Never again would Harry be able to eat apple strudel without feeling the most terrible desire.”
I like that.
Aljaz Cosini is the river guide in the title. He is drowning, although we don’t learn how he came to be underwater till near the end of this novel. As the river covers him, his life – and Australia’s history – swirls around him. Life is the cruellest of boxers, we are told.
One of the seductions of Goodreads is the ‘finds’ – an author or a book that we wouldn’t have known about but for our scramblings over the profiles of others, the reviews, the to-be-read lists. That is how I found Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by this same author. I forget now whom to thank. But I loved that book enough to want to read the whole Richard Flanagan catalogue.
This, his debut, is not as good as Gould’s, yet it clearly shows the promise of enormous talent. There is inventiveness, though shifting from the third person to the first person in the same sentence is something he needs to get over. There is purpose, in the telling of history and the peeling of the individual soul. But there is also just some damn good storytelling. Moments like this one when Aljaz ‘sees’ his mother, Sonja, dressing for a first date with his father, Harry:
”A man that would lead you to go to so much trouble over yourself can only lead to trouble.” She admonished Sonja. But before she left she sprinkled the inside of the top and waist of the dress with ground cloves. And cackled, “Fruit is best eaten seasoned.” Never again would Harry be able to eat apple strudel without feeling the most terrible desire.”
I like that.
July 26, 2016
A torrent of a novel that swirls and eddies and washes over you like the waters of the Franklin River where Aljaz Cosini is drowning. And, as we have always heard, a drowning man sees his whole life flash before him. Here, it is more than just his life, it is also the life of his ancestors, and through them the history of Tasmania, a history that is bloody and disturbing, but touched by magnificent moments of humanity and man's struggle against nature raw in tooth and nail. It is a hugely rewarding piece of literature that tells a story, yes, but also comments on man and his relationship with the past, with nature and with his fellow man.
October 13, 2024
You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die? This book is that. Also, other people’s lives but OK, fine.
To disengage flippant mode for a moment, this was actually a great book. Very moving in places, funny in others, and always interesting. You also get a side order of Australian history, which was nice.
To disengage flippant mode for a moment, this was actually a great book. Very moving in places, funny in others, and always interesting. You also get a side order of Australian history, which was nice.
June 7, 2016
This is Richard Flanagan's first novel, and it is not an easy one to assess. It tells the story of Aljaz, a river guide who leads rafting parties down a Tasmanian river. From the start it is clear that Aljaz is dying, and the book describes his visions of his past, his ancestry and the wider history of Tasmania. Difficult to follow, but full of imagination.
February 4, 2025
Aljaz is the river guide, a name I found hard to remember.
Death by drowning in the best part of 400 pages! Superb writing by Richard Flanagan. A rich insight into Tasmania, where the drowning occurs, particularly its cultural history. Can this really be his first novel?
Tasmania has long been on my list of places to visit. After reading this I must remember to pack my wet weather gear!
3* probably doesn’t do this justice and I want to read more of this author, a considerable talent.
Death by drowning in the best part of 400 pages! Superb writing by Richard Flanagan. A rich insight into Tasmania, where the drowning occurs, particularly its cultural history. Can this really be his first novel?
Tasmania has long been on my list of places to visit. After reading this I must remember to pack my wet weather gear!
3* probably doesn’t do this justice and I want to read more of this author, a considerable talent.
May 19, 2022
3.5 stars. A clever, original, mainly historical fiction novel about Tasmania and the Franklin river. There are lots of well developed, interesting characters. The main character, Aljaz Cosini, a river guide, lies drowning. He relives his life and his forebears. Aljaz had a troubled youth and a volatile relationship with Couta Ho, (half Chinese), mother of his infant daughter. His parents met in Trieste during World War II. His mother, Sonja, is Yugoslavian, and his father Harry is racially mixed, (partly aborigine but looks and lives like a white, though dark skinned settler). We learn about Harry’s grandfather, Ned Quade, a murderer and escaped convict. There is some interesting history about the town of Strahan in Tasmania.
The novel is about Alijaz discovering the soul history of his country. A worthwhile, rewarding reading experience. I particularly enjoyed various segments of the book more than the ‘overall’ novel.
This book was first published in 1994. This is the author’s first novel.
The novel is about Alijaz discovering the soul history of his country. A worthwhile, rewarding reading experience. I particularly enjoyed various segments of the book more than the ‘overall’ novel.
This book was first published in 1994. This is the author’s first novel.
August 22, 2017
Nie jest to najlepsza książka Flanagana, ale zdecydowanie jest godna uwagi.
• Najciekawszy w tej książce jest chyba pomysł na fabułę i ukazanie onirycznych wizji bohatera. Ten wątek wspomnień i poznawania historii własnej rodziny najbardziej mi się tutaj spodobał.
• Jak zwykle widać świetny styl pisania Flanagana. Z tego, co wiem to był to jego debiut (nie jestem w stu procentach pewna) i już od tej powieści widać, że jego styl z książki na książkę staje się coraz lepszy.
• Fajnie jest móc też zobaczyć, że Flanagan przez wszystkie swoje książki wyznaje te same wartości i już "Śmierć przewodnika rzecznego" rozpoczyna pewne motywy i koncepcje, których do tej pory się trzyma.
• Dla mnie "Śmierć przewodnika rzecznego" nie była tak porywająca jak inne jego książki i było w niej trochę luk fabularnych, jednak dalej bardzo szanuję Flanagana za to, co tutaj zrobił.
• Tak jak wspominałam: to nie jest najlepsza książka Flanagana, bo ma swoje wady i na pewno nie spodoba się osobom, które nie miały styczności z jego twórczością, ale mi dobrze się ją czytało i czekam na kolejne powieści.
• Najciekawszy w tej książce jest chyba pomysł na fabułę i ukazanie onirycznych wizji bohatera. Ten wątek wspomnień i poznawania historii własnej rodziny najbardziej mi się tutaj spodobał.
• Jak zwykle widać świetny styl pisania Flanagana. Z tego, co wiem to był to jego debiut (nie jestem w stu procentach pewna) i już od tej powieści widać, że jego styl z książki na książkę staje się coraz lepszy.
• Fajnie jest móc też zobaczyć, że Flanagan przez wszystkie swoje książki wyznaje te same wartości i już "Śmierć przewodnika rzecznego" rozpoczyna pewne motywy i koncepcje, których do tej pory się trzyma.
• Dla mnie "Śmierć przewodnika rzecznego" nie była tak porywająca jak inne jego książki i było w niej trochę luk fabularnych, jednak dalej bardzo szanuję Flanagana za to, co tutaj zrobił.
• Tak jak wspominałam: to nie jest najlepsza książka Flanagana, bo ma swoje wady i na pewno nie spodoba się osobom, które nie miały styczności z jego twórczością, ale mi dobrze się ją czytało i czekam na kolejne powieści.
February 23, 2025
Силно неправдоподобна!
Ще напиша и повече..
Трябва ли миналото на предците ти да те прави слаб и непрекъснато уплашен, защото на всяка страница почти се повтаря думата “страх”.
И защо тези хора, потомци на каторжници и аборигени, според автора нямат воля за живот?
Не разбирам как тогава имат силата да се множат и защо Хари и Соня съвсем се отчаяха, когато разбраха, че ще си останат само с един син и това ги съсипа до такава степен? Как не ти се живее, но пък искаш да съъздаваш още живот? Книгата е пълна с тотални недомислици, като дебел речен водач, който не може да се катери! Що за идея изобщо!
Пълно ревю
Чудех се дали да споделям литературните си разочарования, но приятели ме насърчиха да го направя. Първото за настоящата година беше именно тази книга.
Австралийският писател от Тасмания е удостоен с “Ман Букър” за “Тесният път към далечния север”, която не съм чела, защото я нямам. Реших да отпочна с този дебютен роман, за който се натъкнах основно на суперлативи. Не мога да се съглася с тях.
Тасмания е най-големият австралийски остров. Отличава се с впечатляващо разнообразие на флора и фауна и от това, което видях в нета, е изключително красив. Има бурна история, изпълнена с много насилие. Исках да узная повече за това толкова отдалечено от нас място и да се насладя на изящна проза.
Голяма част от книгата пресъздава именно природните красоти на острова и тези откъси са действително много въздействащи. Но все пак не става дума за пътепис, а за роман, чийто сюжет е меко казано неубедителен за мен.
Накратко, Айляж Козини, водач по величествената река Франклин, при несръчен и зле премерен опит да спаси един от туристите от групата, която предвожда по бързеите и водопадите, се оказва заклещен между две скали и е в смъртна опастност.
Докато умира той изживява целия си живот чрез избрани епизоди, живота на баща си, на някои от предците си. Авторът се е опитал да ни убеди, че преживява и миналото на целия остров и ми се струва, че се е справил. В Тасмания, част от британска колония, са били транспортирани около 75 000 каторжници, оставени да оцеляват или загинат в тази не особено гостоприемна среда. Много от тях умират от глад, други прибягват до канибализъм, жестоки, притръпнали към насилието мъже.
Неизбежно е било да отвличат или “привличат” аборигенски жени, опитвам се да се изразя по-меко. Фланаган не навлиза в подробности, но прочетох в друг източник, че съотношението бели мъже-аборигенски жени е било 6:1, така че повечето деца със смесена кръв едва ли са били заченати с любов. Това е историческият контекст, който в книгата се разкрива много бавно и не докрай. За хора незапознати с фактите може да е трудно да схванат картините на насилие, които изникват в угасващото съзнание на главния герой. Колективната памет на острова изкристализира и потапя Айляж.
За съжаление точно този централен образ е много неубедителен във всяко отношение. Самият Айляж постоянно се срамува от въз пълното си и тромаво, отпуснато тяло. Млад мъж, който някога е бил нелош речен водач се е превърнал в истинска опастност за себе си и туристите. Оказва се, че има и страх от височини, а стануването след дневния преход или в извънредни ситуации е върху трудно достижими скали и изисква супер добра физическа подготовка. Така и не разбрах защо човек негоден да върши толкова рискована работа е нает, защо той самият се наема след всичкия си предишен опит в препитание, предполагащо екстремен риск.
Не ми е ясно защо Фланаган е избрал такъв централен герой: пасивен, постоянно бягащ от живота, първо чрез работохолизъм, после чрез алкохол и дрога, счупен при първата житейска несгода. Дали Айляж е обобщен образ на съвременния тасманиец, който дегенерира под тежестта на историко-генетичното си наследство? Или Ричард Фланаган разказва за свои собствени преживявания като речен водач? Защото той е имал такова преживяване с излизане от тялото си, когато е бил ��а косъм от смъртта. Също така научаваме, че книгата е свързана с конкретен речен водач, който загива при подобни обстоятелства. Възможно е авторът да е вмъкнал прекалено много теми и да не е успял да ги обеме. Онова, което най-много ме озадачава е постоянният страх, който преследва главния герой. Фланаган като че ли го свързва отново с преживяното от предците насилие. Не ме убеди. Много не му достига.
Към недостатъците мога да прибавя и извънредно бавното действие, депресиращата, направо безднадежна атмосфера, неподплатена с психологическа обосновка.
Това, което ми допадна в романа, е искреността на автора по отношение на произхода на тасманийците и начина, по който описва срама на тези хора от онова, което са, от собствената им кръв. Всеки един от героите упорито твърди, че прадедите му не са били каторжници, че няма аборигенска кръв, въпреки матовата си кожа. Много правдоподобен образ е леля Ели със смесена кръв. Запитана от внука си дали тя и той са аборигени, винаги се гневи и отговоря: "Ние сме почтени католици." Никога не употребява думата "аборигени". Нарича ги "старите хора". За разлика от неправдоподобния основен персонаж леля Ели претърпява развитие.
Освен природните красоти на остров Тасмания и добре предадената вътрешна съпротива на жителите му да признаят миналото си и да се помирят с него, този роман не ме впечатли. Поне писах за него. В групата ни няма друг отзив за тази неравно написана книга. Някой пък може да посегне към нея и да не му се стори толкова пренасилено депресираща, колкото на мен.
3/5
Ще напиша и повече..
Трябва ли миналото на предците ти да те прави слаб и непрекъснато уплашен, защото на всяка страница почти се повтаря думата “страх”.
И защо тези хора, потомци на каторжници и аборигени, според автора нямат воля за живот?
Не разбирам как тогава имат силата да се множат и защо Хари и Соня съвсем се отчаяха, когато разбраха, че ще си останат само с един син и това ги съсипа до такава степен? Как не ти се живее, но пък искаш да съъздаваш още живот? Книгата е пълна с тотални недомислици, като дебел речен водач, който не може да се катери! Що за идея изобщо!
Пълно ревю
Чудех се дали да споделям литературните си разочарования, но приятели ме насърчиха да го направя. Първото за настоящата година беше именно тази книга.
Австралийският писател от Тасмания е удостоен с “Ман Букър” за “Тесният път към далечния север”, която не съм чела, защото я нямам. Реших да отпочна с този дебютен роман, за който се натъкнах основно на суперлативи. Не мога да се съглася с тях.
Тасмания е най-големият австралийски остров. Отличава се с впечатляващо разнообразие на флора и фауна и от това, което видях в нета, е изключително красив. Има бурна история, изпълнена с много насилие. Исках да узная повече за това толкова отдалечено от нас място и да се насладя на изящна проза.
Голяма част от книгата пресъздава именно природните красоти на острова и тези откъси са действително много въздействащи. Но все пак не става дума за пътепис, а за роман, чийто сюжет е меко казано неубедителен за мен.
Накратко, Айляж Козини, водач по величествената река Франклин, при несръчен и зле премерен опит да спаси един от туристите от групата, която предвожда по бързеите и водопадите, се оказва заклещен между две скали и е в смъртна опастност.
Докато умира той изживява целия си живот чрез избрани епизоди, живота на баща си, на някои от предците си. Авторът се е опитал да ни убеди, че преживява и миналото на целия остров и ми се струва, че се е справил. В Тасмания, част от британска колония, са били транспортирани около 75 000 каторжници, оставени да оцеляват или загинат в тази не особено гостоприемна среда. Много от тях умират от глад, други прибягват до канибализъм, жестоки, притръпнали към насилието мъже.
Неизбежно е било да отвличат или “привличат” аборигенски жени, опитвам се да се изразя по-меко. Фланаган не навлиза в подробности, но прочетох в друг източник, че съотношението бели мъже-аборигенски жени е било 6:1, така че повечето деца със смесена кръв едва ли са били заченати с любов. Това е историческият контекст, който в книгата се разкрива много бавно и не докрай. За хора незапознати с фактите може да е трудно да схванат картините на насилие, които изникват в угасващото съзнание на главния герой. Колективната памет на острова изкристализира и потапя Айляж.
За съжаление точно този централен образ е много неубедителен във всяко отношение. Самият Айляж постоянно се срамува от въз пълното си и тромаво, отпуснато тяло. Млад мъж, който някога е бил нелош речен водач се е превърнал в истинска опастност за себе си и туристите. Оказва се, че има и страх от височини, а стануването след дневния преход или в извънредни ситуации е върху трудно достижими скали и изисква супер добра физическа подготовка. Така и не разбрах защо човек негоден да върши толкова рискована работа е нает, защо той самият се наема след всичкия си предишен опит в препитание, предполагащо екстремен риск.
Не ми е ясно защо Фланаган е избрал такъв централен герой: пасивен, постоянно бягащ от живота, първо чрез работохолизъм, после чрез алкохол и дрога, счупен при първата житейска несгода. Дали Айляж е обобщен образ на съвременния тасманиец, който дегенерира под тежестта на историко-генетичното си наследство? Или Ричард Фланаган разказва за свои собствени преживявания като речен водач? Защото той е имал такова преживяване с излизане от тялото си, когато е бил ��а косъм от смъртта. Също така научаваме, че книгата е свързана с конкретен речен водач, който загива при подобни обстоятелства. Възможно е авторът да е вмъкнал прекалено много теми и да не е успял да ги обеме. Онова, което най-много ме озадачава е постоянният страх, който преследва главния герой. Фланаган като че ли го свързва отново с преживяното от предците насилие. Не ме убеди. Много не му достига.
Към недостатъците мога да прибавя и извънредно бавното действие, депресиращата, направо безднадежна атмосфера, неподплатена с психологическа обосновка.
Това, което ми допадна в романа, е искреността на автора по отношение на произхода на тасманийците и начина, по който описва срама на тези хора от онова, което са, от собствената им кръв. Всеки един от героите упорито твърди, че прадедите му не са били каторжници, че няма аборигенска кръв, въпреки матовата си кожа. Много правдоподобен образ е леля Ели със смесена кръв. Запитана от внука си дали тя и той са аборигени, винаги се гневи и отговоря: "Ние сме почтени католици." Никога не употребява думата "аборигени". Нарича ги "старите хора". За разлика от неправдоподобния основен персонаж леля Ели претърпява развитие.
Освен природните красоти на остров Тасмания и добре предадената вътрешна съпротива на жителите му да признаят миналото си и да се помирят с него, този роман не ме впечатли. Поне писах за него. В групата ни няма друг отзив за тази неравно написана книга. Някой пък може да посегне към нея и да не му се стори толкова пренасилено депресираща, колкото на мен.
3/5
January 18, 2022
راوی داستان، راهنمای یک تور گردشگری بر رودخانهی فرانکلین در تاسمانی است و داستان را هنگامی برای ما روایت میکند که زیر آب گیر افتاده و در آستانهی مرگ است. تمام رمان در همین لحظات روایت میشود اما همهی آن چه روایت میشود این نیست. این دیگر از آن داستانها نیست که راوی در لحظه مرگ، کل زندگی خود را میبیند و برای ما تعریف میکند. آری، راوی تصاویری از گذشته برای ما میآورد اما نه فقط گذشتهی خودش (از نوزادی تا کنون)، که گذشتهی نیاکانش و آن چه طی چند نسل بر بومیان تاسمانی، این مردمان ناشناخته، رفته است. سرگذشتی که هر چه پیشتر میرویم تاثیربرانگیزتر و تکاندهندهتر میشود.
داستان در طبیعت وحشی تاسمانی میگذرد، با ریزبینیهای راوی نسبت به جریان وحشی آب، و جریان وحشی زمان که در دو سدهی اخیر که بر زندگی بومیان تاسمانی همچون سیلابی گذشته و رفته و برده است. توصیفات راوی از طبیعت بکر رودخانه فرانکلین آنچنان تاثیرگذار است که بارها و بارها خواننده را با هوسِ زدن به دامن طبیعت به چالش میکشد اما پیش از آن که کوله و کیسهخواب ببندی، چالشهای درون آدمیان داستان بر جا مینشاندت.
داستان به درستی به شیوهای فاکنری برای ما روایت میشود و هر چه پیشتر میرویم، گویی همانگونه که جریان آب راوی را میشوید و در خود غرق میکند، جریان زمان و پیچیدگیهای روایی و فجایعی که بر مردمان داستان گذشته، خواننده را به گرداب خود میکشد و پیش میرود. «مرگ راهنمای رودخانه» باز هم همچون بسیاری از آثار فاکنر، هر چه پیشتر میرود خواندنیتر و تاثیرگذارتر میشود. گویی تصویری گنگ و تاریک را در میانه گذاشته هر بار از زاویهای، زمانی، و نگاهی تازه به آن مینگرد و پیش روی خواننده میگذارد تا سرانجام خواننده را با فاجعهای که در عمق داستان نهفته است رویارو کند و او را تنها بگذارد. هر چه داستان در آغاز کند و گاه حتی ملالآور است، در فصلهای پایانی آه از نهاد خواننده بلند میکند.
اینها همه از «مرگ راهنمای رودخانه» داستانی عمیق و تجربهای بکر برای خواندن میآفریند، اما نه برای خوانندهای که در پی حل معما و هیجان ماجرا باشد، بلکه برای آنکه بخواهد تجربهای یکسر متفاوت را از سر بگذراند و زیستجهانی تازه را زندگی و حتی مزمزه کند.
از فلاناگان پیشتر Narrow Road to the Deep North را خوانده بودم (اینجا دربارهاش نوشتم: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) و واقعیت آن است که این داستان را به اندازه آن (که به گمانم شاهکاری تراز اول بود) دوست نداشتم. به گمانم فلاناگان در آن اثر پختهتر شده و نثر و سبک ویژهی خود را یافته و هر چه بهتر دریافته که او راوی شلاقبهدست سیاهیها و فجایعی است که بر آدمیان گذشته؛ شلاقی که البته بر ذهن خواننده مینشیند.
داستان در طبیعت وحشی تاسمانی میگذرد، با ریزبینیهای راوی نسبت به جریان وحشی آب، و جریان وحشی زمان که در دو سدهی اخیر که بر زندگی بومیان تاسمانی همچون سیلابی گذشته و رفته و برده است. توصیفات راوی از طبیعت بکر رودخانه فرانکلین آنچنان تاثیرگذار است که بارها و بارها خواننده را با هوسِ زدن به دامن طبیعت به چالش میکشد اما پیش از آن که کوله و کیسهخواب ببندی، چالشهای درون آدمیان داستان بر جا مینشاندت.
داستان به درستی به شیوهای فاکنری برای ما روایت میشود و هر چه پیشتر میرویم، گویی همانگونه که جریان آب راوی را میشوید و در خود غرق میکند، جریان زمان و پیچیدگیهای روایی و فجایعی که بر مردمان داستان گذشته، خواننده را به گرداب خود میکشد و پیش میرود. «مرگ راهنمای رودخانه» باز هم همچون بسیاری از آثار فاکنر، هر چه پیشتر میرود خواندنیتر و تاثیرگذارتر میشود. گویی تصویری گنگ و تاریک را در میانه گذاشته هر بار از زاویهای، زمانی، و نگاهی تازه به آن مینگرد و پیش روی خواننده میگذارد تا سرانجام خواننده را با فاجعهای که در عمق داستان نهفته است رویارو کند و او را تنها بگذارد. هر چه داستان در آغاز کند و گاه حتی ملالآور است، در فصلهای پایانی آه از نهاد خواننده بلند میکند.
اینها همه از «مرگ راهنمای رودخانه» داستانی عمیق و تجربهای بکر برای خواندن میآفریند، اما نه برای خوانندهای که در پی حل معما و هیجان ماجرا باشد، بلکه برای آنکه بخواهد تجربهای یکسر متفاوت را از سر بگذراند و زیستجهانی تازه را زندگی و حتی مزمزه کند.
از فلاناگان پیشتر Narrow Road to the Deep North را خوانده بودم (اینجا دربارهاش نوشتم: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) و واقعیت آن است که این داستان را به اندازه آن (که به گمانم شاهکاری تراز اول بود) دوست نداشتم. به گمانم فلاناگان در آن اثر پختهتر شده و نثر و سبک ویژهی خود را یافته و هر چه بهتر دریافته که او راوی شلاقبهدست سیاهیها و فجایعی است که بر آدمیان گذشته؛ شلاقی که البته بر ذهن خواننده مینشیند.
September 25, 2018
Смъртта е по-малко болезнена от живота…: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...
Един мъж е под водата. Той е опитен речен водач, който е поел случайно един курс много години след като се е отказал от този неблагодарен занаят, изпълнен с природни предизвикателства и дразнещи туристи. Направени са грешки, за които той ще плати най-високата цена. И в миговете до смъртта пред очите му се изнизва не само неговият живот, но и този на неговите родители и предци – и в тяхните преживелици се оглежда Тасмания с нейната причудлива история, мрачно каторжническо ДНК и пълно отхвърляне на местното население. Фланаган отново маневрира уверено между различни течения, прехвърля ни през времена и през различни погледи, успоредно описва и далечното, и близкото минало, и настоящето – а там, в непосредственото бъдно един мъж се дави пред очите на безпомощните свидетели.
Colibri Books
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...
Един мъж е под водата. Той е опитен речен водач, който е поел случайно един курс много години след като се е отказал от този неблагодарен занаят, изпълнен с природни предизвикателства и дразнещи туристи. Направени са грешки, за които той ще плати най-високата цена. И в миговете до смъртта пред очите му се изнизва не само неговият живот, но и този на неговите родители и предци – и в тяхните преживелици се оглежда Тасмания с нейната причудлива история, мрачно каторжническо ДНК и пълно отхвърляне на местното население. Фланаган отново маневрира уверено между различни течения, прехвърля ни през времена и през различни погледи, успоредно описва и далечното, и близкото минало, и настоящето – а там, в непосредственото бъдно един мъж се дави пред очите на безпомощните свидетели.
Colibri Books
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...
September 14, 2024
Aljaz Cosini, the titular river guide, is trapped underwater during a rafting accident on the Franklin River in Tasmania. As Aljaz faces impending death, he experiences a series of visions that merge his own life story with the history of his family, the land, and the indigenous people of Tasmania. The structure is nonlinear and comprises interconnected episodes which gradually reveal the reasons for Aljaz’s dire situation. They also cover his ancestors, who are a mix of different ethnicities and races, and a wide swath of Tasmania’s history.
We know from the start that Aljaz is dying, and his visions provide the structure for the narrative. We meet his fellow river guides and the unsuspecting tourists who are facing many more survival challenges than expected. My favorite part of this book is the story of Aljaz himself. The river serves as a metaphor for the journey of life and the passage of time. The structure occasionally gets in the way, with its constant shifts, but it is well-written and worth reading.
We know from the start that Aljaz is dying, and his visions provide the structure for the narrative. We meet his fellow river guides and the unsuspecting tourists who are facing many more survival challenges than expected. My favorite part of this book is the story of Aljaz himself. The river serves as a metaphor for the journey of life and the passage of time. The structure occasionally gets in the way, with its constant shifts, but it is well-written and worth reading.
July 9, 2020
Фланаган просто може да пише. И винаги се получава оригинално.
Тук нещата много ми напомняха на моменти на "Докато лежах и умирах" на Фокнър.
Бих прочел и останалите книги на Фланаган, дано ги преведат на български.
Тук нещата много ми напомняха на моменти на "Докато лежах и умирах" на Фокнър.
Бих прочел и останалите книги на Фланаган, дано ги преведат на български.
January 3, 2016
When the biggest "spoiler" is in the title of the book, that book shouldn't be quite so tense! It's a bit like the movie Apollo 13 where I still wonder if they will make it back safely despite having seen the actual events unfold in 1970 and the movie at least twice. This book tells the story of a river guide drowning and the visions he has: they say a drowning man sees his life flash before his eyes, but this river guide sees his whole family history previously unknown to him. In parallel, we gradually learn how he came to be in his predicament. The writing is excellent and the structure builds the tension. The mix of history and magical-realism makes it feel dream-like in places, which I think was probably the intention. An excellent book.
January 1, 2020
An intriguing rendering of the life and prolonged death of river guide Aljaz Cosini, trapped beneath a waterfall on the Franklin River in Tasmania having attempted to rescue one of his fellow river travellers - whilst stuck under the water, Aljaz relives not only episodes from his own life but also those of this ancestors and their contribution to the history of Australian colonisation. Brilliantly vivid historical descriptions and characterisations were tempered somewhat for me by dreams and flights of fantasy, getting more bizarre towards the end of Aljaz's struggle for existence - 8/10.
August 25, 2021
The writing gets better as it goes along - almost as if parts of the book were written at different times. The first part of the book has poorly chosen words and bad editing. The last third of the book is sometimes awe-inspiring.
October 31, 2009
I thought that Flanagan's "Wanting" was superb. This one is even better. One reviewer called it "the sort of stunt Faulkner and Ambrose Bierce together might have concocted..."I see the Faulkner more than the Bierce, but then I've only read The Devil's Dictionary. As with "Wanting", this book takes place in Tasmania. The narrator, the eponymous river guide, who has fallen into whitewater at the bottom of a huge falls on the Franklin River, is in the process of drowning from the very beginning of the novel. The Christian Science Monitor says: "The mythos here is wholly Australian, but Flanagan uses rafting as effectively as Hemingway used bull fighting to explore the existential struggle to act nobly in the face of death."
October 17, 2014
Death of a River Guide is one of the finest books of our time. This haunting tale encompasses all that it means to be part of this land Australia – beauty and terror; laconic present and murky past; courage, tenacity and acceptance
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2009/04/05/de...
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2009/04/05/de...
January 3, 2014
Here Flanagan continues to treat two of his great themes, race and love. It's a broad delta of a family saga which narrows to the funnel of Aljaz Cosini's life and his emotional purge on Tasmania's wild Franklin River. Perhaps the ending is a bit trite and smudges Flanagan's achievement. But getting there you'll encounter some of the most majestic prose you'll ever find.
July 28, 2025
Richard Flanagan has long been a favourite of mine among Australian authors. I consider him to be one of the most forthright, intelligently creative and politically aware writers writing today, and he is never shy about expressing his views.
It's difficult to accept that this is Flanagan's debut major novel, first published in 1994 and short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award in 1995. (That award was controversially won by Helen Demidenko for The Hand That Signed the Paper).
Death of a River Guide is fantastically creative in its structure and carefully nuanced in its themes and cultural references.
The story of Aljaz Cosini, the river guide who drowns, is secondary to the greater story that is told through this unfortunate man's dream-like visions, experienced as he is drowning. It's the back story, not so much the fateful journey down the Tasmanian Franklin River, that is key to this novel.
The story of the rafting adventure down the river, led by Aljaz and his colleague Cockroach, guiding a group of 'punters' on an adventure experience, is revealed in short snippets as the novel progresses. Although there is some serious drama involved, as the river rises and the torrent becomes more hazardous, Flanagan has not really tried to write an adventure drama story.
It's much more subtle than that. As Aljaz's visions are revealed, in what seems to be a random order that is not chronological, the novel becomes something of an historical commentary on the colonialization of Tasmania.
Flanagan touches on a multitude of themes, including migration, not just the British penal settlement, but also from Europe, the overtly racist and appalling treatment of the local Aboriginal population, that ultimately led to extermination, and the systematic rape of the natural environment by these new white settlers.
But is is also an homage to the harsh natural beauty of Tasmania (and the environmental risks it continues to face). Set mostly on the weather exposed west coast of the island, around places like Strahan, Queenstown, Zeehan, the Macquarie Harbour and the mighty River Gordon, Flanagan has shared his obvious love for this wild and beautiful landscape.
This novel is ambitious, intricate and carefully structured, highly original, and a fine example of the craft that Flanagan has come to master. The prose is delightful and its cultural and historical insights brim with intelligence and passion.
This wasn't what I expected it to be, but I enjoyed it very much. 4.5 stars.
It's difficult to accept that this is Flanagan's debut major novel, first published in 1994 and short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award in 1995. (That award was controversially won by Helen Demidenko for The Hand That Signed the Paper).
Death of a River Guide is fantastically creative in its structure and carefully nuanced in its themes and cultural references.
The story of Aljaz Cosini, the river guide who drowns, is secondary to the greater story that is told through this unfortunate man's dream-like visions, experienced as he is drowning. It's the back story, not so much the fateful journey down the Tasmanian Franklin River, that is key to this novel.
The story of the rafting adventure down the river, led by Aljaz and his colleague Cockroach, guiding a group of 'punters' on an adventure experience, is revealed in short snippets as the novel progresses. Although there is some serious drama involved, as the river rises and the torrent becomes more hazardous, Flanagan has not really tried to write an adventure drama story.
It's much more subtle than that. As Aljaz's visions are revealed, in what seems to be a random order that is not chronological, the novel becomes something of an historical commentary on the colonialization of Tasmania.
Flanagan touches on a multitude of themes, including migration, not just the British penal settlement, but also from Europe, the overtly racist and appalling treatment of the local Aboriginal population, that ultimately led to extermination, and the systematic rape of the natural environment by these new white settlers.
But is is also an homage to the harsh natural beauty of Tasmania (and the environmental risks it continues to face). Set mostly on the weather exposed west coast of the island, around places like Strahan, Queenstown, Zeehan, the Macquarie Harbour and the mighty River Gordon, Flanagan has shared his obvious love for this wild and beautiful landscape.
This novel is ambitious, intricate and carefully structured, highly original, and a fine example of the craft that Flanagan has come to master. The prose is delightful and its cultural and historical insights brim with intelligence and passion.
This wasn't what I expected it to be, but I enjoyed it very much. 4.5 stars.
November 20, 2017
Primul roman al lui Richard Flanagan este o odă insulei pe care s-a născut, fie că vorbim despre natura în ansamblul ei sau oamenilor care trăiesc acolo.
În prim plan se află Aljaz Cosini, călăuză pe râurile sălbatice ale insulei pentru clienți exclusiviști, care însă se află în pragul morții, prins în vâltoarea râului umflat de ploi. Prilej pentru a avea viziuni cu trecutul său sau cu trecutul strămoșilor săi. Sunt povești despre origine (Tasmania e împărțită între albi puri, aborigeni și foști ocnași), despre natură și faună, despre dragoste și violență, despre imigrație și sălbăticie, despre violuri sau canibalism.
Un roman ok, din care se vede talentul autorului, spre care mă grăbesc pentru a-i citi și cărțile ulterioare.
În prim plan se află Aljaz Cosini, călăuză pe râurile sălbatice ale insulei pentru clienți exclusiviști, care însă se află în pragul morții, prins în vâltoarea râului umflat de ploi. Prilej pentru a avea viziuni cu trecutul său sau cu trecutul strămoșilor săi. Sunt povești despre origine (Tasmania e împărțită între albi puri, aborigeni și foști ocnași), despre natură și faună, despre dragoste și violență, despre imigrație și sălbăticie, despre violuri sau canibalism.
Un roman ok, din care se vede talentul autorului, spre care mă grăbesc pentru a-i citi și cărțile ulterioare.
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This book's synopsis sounds pretty boring tho
This book's synopsis sounds pretty boring tho
October 4, 2018
‘I have been granted visions – grand, great, wild, sweeping visions. My mind rattles with them as they are born to me.’
Aljaz Cosini and Jason Krezwa are river guides, taking a group of tourists on a raft trip down Tasmania’s Franklin River. Rain falls, and the river is in flood. Flowing rapidly, the Franklin is more dangerous. One of the tourists falls overboard and drowns. Then Aljaz becomes trapped under a rapid, and as he drowns is beset with visions. It is said that drowning men will see their life flash before them. But Aljaz’s visions are not confined to his own life, not just a replay of a life about to end. Aljaz’s visions include the lives of his parents and their ancestors, they also include other aspects of human impact on Tasmania. Life and death, action and consequence.
‘Slowly people appear around me, faces of people I have never met but about whom I know everything.’
I found this novel both challenging and uplifting. Challenging because Mr Flanagan manages to describe aspects of Tasmanian history that many of us would prefer to forget or ignore, and uplifting because the language he uses to do this is so rich in imagery. This was Richard Flanagan’s first novel, published in 1994. While I didn’t like it quite as much as his second novel, ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’, I suspect this is because ‘Death of a River Guide’ makes me far more uncomfortable about the past. It is not an easy read, but I found it rewarding.
‘A river can grant you visions in an act at once generous and despicable, but even a river like the Franklin in full flood cannot explain everything.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Aljaz Cosini and Jason Krezwa are river guides, taking a group of tourists on a raft trip down Tasmania’s Franklin River. Rain falls, and the river is in flood. Flowing rapidly, the Franklin is more dangerous. One of the tourists falls overboard and drowns. Then Aljaz becomes trapped under a rapid, and as he drowns is beset with visions. It is said that drowning men will see their life flash before them. But Aljaz’s visions are not confined to his own life, not just a replay of a life about to end. Aljaz’s visions include the lives of his parents and their ancestors, they also include other aspects of human impact on Tasmania. Life and death, action and consequence.
‘Slowly people appear around me, faces of people I have never met but about whom I know everything.’
I found this novel both challenging and uplifting. Challenging because Mr Flanagan manages to describe aspects of Tasmanian history that many of us would prefer to forget or ignore, and uplifting because the language he uses to do this is so rich in imagery. This was Richard Flanagan’s first novel, published in 1994. While I didn’t like it quite as much as his second novel, ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’, I suspect this is because ‘Death of a River Guide’ makes me far more uncomfortable about the past. It is not an easy read, but I found it rewarding.
‘A river can grant you visions in an act at once generous and despicable, but even a river like the Franklin in full flood cannot explain everything.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
June 5, 2021
3,5*
Тази книга е различна от това, което си представях, макар че сега, замисляйки се, не съм много сигурна какво точно си представях.
Това е роман-спомен за живота на един човек и неговите близки, роман-равносметка в най-чист вид. Различен е, тъй като действието се развива в Тасмания, край поречието на река Франклин, и това е място, което за мен е буквално самият край на света. Толкова далечно и непознато. Фланаган е избрал стила на разпокъсаните спомени, за да ни представи това непознато място и според мен се е справил доста увлекателно, макар че на мнозина книгата може да им се стори по-скоро тежка с темата си за самотата и смъртта.
В някаква степен романът ми прилича на "Светилата" на Елинор Катън, може би защото се разказва за същия регион ("Светилата" представят Нова Зеландия, но изглежда Тасмания е преминавала през сходно развитие).
Тази книга е различна от това, което си представях, макар че сега, замисляйки се, не съм много сигурна какво точно си представях.
Това е роман-спомен за живота на един човек и неговите близки, роман-равносметка в най-чист вид. Различен е, тъй като действието се развива в Тасмания, край поречието на река Франклин, и това е място, което за мен е буквално самият край на света. Толкова далечно и непознато. Фланаган е избрал стила на разпокъсаните спомени, за да ни представи това непознато място и според мен се е справил доста увлекателно, макар че на мнозина книгата може да им се стори по-скоро тежка с темата си за самотата и смъртта.
В някаква степен романът ми прилича на "Светилата" на Елинор Катън, може би защото се разказва за същия регион ("Светилата" представят Нова Зеландия, но изглежда Тасмания е преминавала през сходно развитие).
September 30, 2014
This was an interesting novel of a man looking back on his life while he was drowning. The writing was wonderful, in the lines of Faulkner in a way. It gave the notion that you do see your life played out as you die and that there are the people you know, family, friends, and those you love who are there for you at the end of your earthly life.
March 14, 2017
DNRA Bit too esoteric and verbose. Great descriptors of the beautiful Franklin. Felt a bit mixed 'metaphor -ish' with the time frame of say 4 minutes having too many minutes of memory.
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