Richard Flanagan “Gould's Book of Fish: a novel in 12 fish “

A great book, a fantastic story beautifully told and well written. I like this sort of stories, a bit history, a bit fantasy, so well described so that you can’t say what is real and what is fiction. Gould lives as a prisoner on an Australian penalty colony, in a cell close to the sea, so close that it is flooded each time the tide comes in. He has to draw pictures for Mr Lempiere and by doing this he becomes like a fish himself.

Two passages I really liked:

Then -& my shame is such that I can only refere to myself in this regard in the third person – Billy Gould felt the urge to throw up.


IT WAS A TURD.
It was enormous.
It might even be, reckoned I in awe, the largest pig turd on the planet that morning. Perhaps ever. It was most certainly an astounding sight, not easy to immediately reconcile with the idea of dung. How in that ruddy early winter morning light that steaming obelisk of crap glowed. It might just have been possible to mistake it for a sublime & infinitely valuable gold nugget were it nor for the somewhat tarnished, yet unmistakable form of a once-mended, now mangled cheap pewter shoe buckle protruding from the pyramid’s base.
I climbed up on the fence & peered more closely. In the churned-up earth around the pile of glinting pig shit, looking as if the had been discarded after some bacchanalian excess, I saw shreds of a shirt (bloodied), a tail of a black swallow-tailed coat (torn), a blue silk sleeve (shredded), & half a spotted silk handkerchief (slobbery).
Then I noticed what looked uncomfortably like a human thigh bone. Other gory, muddied bones. Forearm bones. Vertebrae. Then I saw the great wen itself, a huge bloodied skull lying on its side like some fallen Pacific Island idol.
Castlereagh farted, a odour at once sweetly acrid & horrendously overpowering, & at that moment I, who stood immediately downwind, knew that familiar stench to be on other that the atomises essence of Mr Lempriere.

bookray here we go:

book-man-8 germany (world)
Miss-Lizzy germay (world)
trygvasson germany (world)
eMeReS netherlands (eu)
MyopicMeringue england (world)
Winterson england (world)
florafloraflora usa (world)
pammykn usa (world)
kirst040 australia (world)
jubby australia (world)
livrecache australia (world)
starfarer2000 germany (World)


Basic rules:
Please make a journal entry upon receiving the book - enjoy a good read - make a journal entry with a comment - PM the next bookcrosser for his/her address - put the book in the mail and make a release note.
If anyone wants to drop out of the bookray/-ring: please PM me so I can update the list.
In a bookray: last bookcrosser does a release wherever he/she thinks suitable - or you might consider to start another bookring or -ray with it. I will try to find more readers later on, in that case I may expand the ray.

I just got the book from Ben-Nevis. I'll start reading immediately or maybe tomorrow... The bookring must go round!

I just could not stop reading! An incredibly rich story, utmost fascinating. Beautiful writing. Different but very original; it reminded me more than once of the writings by Thomas Pynchon.

It is not always easy: some descriptions are gruesome, horrible and - possibly - not to everybody's taste. The story-thread is absolutely fantastic - in every sense of this word. The characters of the plot are for the most part well sketched. If it is your "thing", you will not stop reading...

Now this book will go round - to Miss-Lizzy.

I received the book on Saturday but haven't started reading yet. I will start as soon as possible. It may take me a while though but I'll try my best not to keep it too long.
Thanks to book-man-8 for passing it on to me.

I decided not to end this book. I read about 30 pages of it but it's not the kind of book which fascinates me or which I really like. Maybe it's just because I don't understand so many words and then it's difficult to follow the plot. That's why I also won't rate it. I couldn't say whether it was good or bad by reading so few pages.
Anyway, I'm gonna send it to the next Bookcrosser on the list - before it's going to stay here the whole winter ;) - and hope he/she enjoys it more than me.

The book has arrived ... it got battered around a little. I´ll start reading it this weekend.

I found the language generally rather difficult to read - manageable allright, but it does take away from the fun of reading.
I liked the portrayal of all the bizarre ambitions of the prison authorities in contrast to the sheer misery of life in a penal colony. While Gould bowes to the orders of authority his manuscript reveals their perverted version of civilization and tells his own story of survival. All in all a very fantastical storyline that I liked.
I will send the book an as soon as I have the next address.

Released on Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at about 1:00:00 AM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at Posted to another bookcrosser in Hamburg, Germany, By Post Controlled Releases.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sent on to the Netherlands.

I just came home, soaking wet and cold, and found this book in the mail. It cheered me up immediately.
At the moment I am very busy, but between Christmas and the New Year I have some days off and hopefully I can spend them enjoying this book.

I finally finished the book in the weekend, yet still I am not sure what to make of it. I just couldn't get into it, but couldn't get out of it either.
Some parts were gripping and at other times I was totally lost and clueless. Ben-nevis writes about the mix of history and fantasy, for me it was too unreliable. When I first found out that the story was set in 18th century Tasmania I was very eager to read it. Not too long ago I have read "English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale, set in that same time and place, and that book had left me deeply impressed (journal) I guess I was searching for more confirmation of what I had read in English Passengers, but instead I found a jumbled mess of facts and fiction that left me totally confused. Maybe this is one of the aims or themes of the book, which in itself is interesting, but this time it didn't work for me.

The picture I uploaded comes from a book of postcards that I bought some time ago at a second-hand bookstall. It is painted by John James Audubon (1785-1851). Gould writes about his time with a certain Jean-Babeuf Audubon, a painter of birds:
p.62 "Audubon knew a great deal about birds & their customs & society &very neat & hard & not fuzzy or soft at all were his bird pictures. As if from under the feathered wings of their mother, Audubon's birds would emerge from beneath his dirty lace cuffs, fully formed, beautiful, sorrowful, alive. From Audubon I learnt to search the animal being painted for its essential humours, its pride or its earnestness or its savagery, its idiocy or its madness."

I like it how the pictures of Gould, that are indeed real, are linked to the birds of Audubon. I don't think they really met, but looking at their work I do feel that somehow they were kindred spirits in the way they strive to catch the essence of their subjects. I have put the card in the book for the others in the ring to see.

I will send MyopicMeringue a second PM now to get the next address and hopefully send the fish on their way again very soon.

RELEASE NOTES:

It turned out that I never received the first PM with the address for the next stop. But now the book is on its way to MyopicMeringue in the UK.

This arrived this morning - thanks, eMeReS. And thanks, Ben-Nevis, for starting this bookring. It does look like a fascinating book, with a lovely cover - I'm looking forward to reading it. I do have a couple of other bookring books to read first though, so I won't be able to start reading it straight away.

I'm really really sorry I've had this so long. I'm sending it to Winterson this morning.

I never got round to reading it, but it does look like such an interesting book, and then I found another copy of it in a charity shop, so I bought it. When I have read it, I will edit this journal entry and add my thoughts on the book. Thank you, Ben-Nevis, for introducing me to this book - I'd never heard of it before.

Again, I'm sorry for holding up the bookring. :-(