Reviews

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

uuuultraviolennnnt's review

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

immediate prose, so modern. an honest account of living and dying in the 21st century. the children are cruel, life’s nihilism even crueler. the irrelevance of whole pieces of body just disappearing was really scary, because it truly doesn’t matter anymore. we’ve lost mattering and hold on to life for dear solace. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death

lauravolsic's review against another edition

3.75

velmi nezvykla a zajimava novela.
skvele vykreslene postavy, hlavne jejich emoce, a pravdiva realita (a budoucnost) dnesniho sveta, konkretne nasledky globalniho oteplovani.
i presto, jak skvely namet kniha mela, mi v ni neco chybelo. 
podruhe si uz knihu asi neprectu, ale k precteni nekomu jinemu bych ji urcite doporucila:)

tevreads's review against another edition

4.0

This is a novel, in subject and form, that has captured for me what the start of last year was about. Richard Flanagan has successfully crafted a work of fiction that frames the hysteria and nausea around the bushfires and social media, a chaotic stream of events permeated by fake news and a never-ending cycle of doom and gloom. I’m always looking for fiction that successfully captures the embedded use of phones and social media in today’s society, and I think this is the closest thing to it I’ve read. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams follows this hysteria through the literal vanishing of the protagonist, as others around her and her mother either vanish or hold on to a life not worth living. Flanagan addresses themes like social media, euthanasia, and the environment with nuance and makes this fiction a compelling read.

jmatkinson1's review against another edition

4.0

Francie lies in a hospital bed, she is old and is suffering but her three children are insistent that all attempts are made to keep her awake. High-flying Anna has to balance caring for her mother with dealing with her layabout son and all around her things are disappearing, material things, parts of her body and then parts of other people. Terzo is guilty about the suicide of his brother but in becoming materially successful he has become lonely. Tommy, the youngest, is seen as a failure by his siblings. As bushfires rage, the climate gets warmer and species become extinct, Francie fades.
I really like Flanagan's writing, he has a knack of producing very hypnotic prose that sucks the reader in. Here there are lots of very deep areas explored - superficially the care of the elderly, more deeply different forms of stress affecting mid-lifers and more profoundly the human impact on the environment. This multi-layered approach is really clever and one can almost forgive the rather 'psychedelic' passages.

binstonbirchill's review against another edition

4.0

This is a bit of a strange novel with a mix of threads that threaten to resist any intended weaving process. Or something like that. The main thread has our narrator and her siblings deciding what to do about their dying elderly mother. There are some very real moments and anyone that’s been in a similar situation will definitely relate to much of it. There’s an analogy to the environment, somehow there’s people who find it annoying when environmental concerns are encountered in literature, but I personally found it fitting if a bit clunky in execution. There’s also a thread about a finger that suddenly disappears, but whose really gonna notice something that incidental.

achjlles's review against another edition

reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

read this for my honours australian literature class & it is the third book to ever make me cry. when

Spoiler

anna went into gus’ room and saw both of his ears and one of his eyes had vanished and she just walked away

i found my face covered in tears and i had to take a walk before i could continue reading. that said i didn’t love this. the form was, at first weird and kind of annoying, but you definitely get used to it and it does make sense. flanagan also isn’t particularly subtle and felt a little heavy handed at times, but i think that might be the point. overall, a solid read

sprezzatura09's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Stunning and devastating - cannot recommend enough.

paigej101's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

0.75

evathebug's review

dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

ladyeremite's review against another edition

5.0

Once, every so often, we read a book that encapsulates, in words much more eloquent than we could ever summon, a certain imprecise feeling we have about the world. Flanagan's novel does that for me. Perhaps you'd say it's a bit heavy-handed, a bit too on the nose... but then again, that's how I'fe felt for at least this past year and a half. Haunting, melancholic and yet strangely beautiful, an elegy for the end of the world.