The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

The planet chokes and burns and there is mass extinction. On the other hand, there is the most (un?)intelligent species trying to stay alive when staying alive should not be an option. But are they staying alive or just heading towards disappearing little by little, body parts and all?

This is my third book by Richard Flanagan. For me the most difficult to read so far but then, strangely, the most thought-provoking. Blending heavy metaphor, magic realism, stream of conscious delivery; add the human elements of love, brutality, indifference and egoism, just to name a few, we are asked, do we think about the future or do we just ignore it for what it might or might not be? Let all just disappear, except that that suit our collective self-importance?

Recommended to those that only wish to look at social media Not really. .

Extremely disappointing. Maybe there's some comfort in the thought that a Man Booker prize winner can write terribly? Polemical, not fully thought out in terms of plot. No editing evident. Fumbling attempt to write female characters that just end up being unreal cold phantasms of an out-of-touch male mind that can't reach beyond its cishet male gaze. It's amazing how transparently male writers reveal all their complexes around women in their writing of female characters. I really tried to find something I liked about it & all I could think of was that the hardback cover (underneath the weird male gazey dustcover) is a close up of a green parrot's wings. So yeah.