Putting on the Plum 

Christopher Tayler

Richard Flanagan trained as a historian, and his novels have often emphasised the redemptive power of memory. For his characters, though, remembering is a strenuous business. There are traps to be avoided and barriers to overcome – an obstacle course of crying jags, guilt-ridden stupors, deathbed hallucinations. The frozen sea of the characters’ inner lives needs vigorous axe work, and the truths that are revealed will usually be painful. Still, the past demands a reckoning in these novels, and comforting fictions have to be set aside – not least because, in Flanagan’s books, it’s the comforting fictions that cause most of the trouble.

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