With every scene, every character, and every sentence deployed in unabashed support of the book’s themes, the novel lacks the narrative verisimilitude it needs to transcend the realm of polemic-a problem exacerbated by Flanagan’s summary-heavy style, his refusal to explore any setting, person, or idea with adequate depth or complexity. Yet though Flanagan is justified in his outrage-the natural world is literally disappearing in front of our glazed eyes-he fails to embed his outrage in a convincingly articulated story. Flanagan’s latest is haunted by a central feature of our modern epoch: human denial in the face of social and environmental cataclysm. Gone, never to return.” Yet what does Anna do about it? She reaches for her phone and “stare solemnly at her screen,” taking a perverse comfort from the dead firefighters and charred songbirds of the Anthropocene extinction.
Meanwhile, Australia is burning, birds are dying, and parts of Anna’s body are vanishing.
Francie dwindles and suffers but, in a sense, lives. Confusing a material existence for a meaningful one, Anna and Terzo demand life-prolonging intervention after life-prolonging intervention. This choice pits Anna and Terzo-the “successful” siblings who, having left Tasmania to pursue joyless careers, now feel guilty for having neglected their mother-against Tommy, “a failed artist” who still lives in the Hobart area. A Tasmanian family grapples with death, extinction, and vanishing limbs.Īnna, Terzo, and Tommy Foley have a problem: Their 86-year-old mother, Francie, is dying, and they have to decide whether to let her.
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