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Wanting cover art

Wanting

By: Richard Flanagan
Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
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Editor reviews

Richard Flanagan's Wanting examines the nature and power of desire through interwoven historical stories about Charles Dickens and his connection to his work, and the adoption of an aboriginal girl, Mathinna, by Lady Jane Franklin. Actor Humphrey Bower's deliberate contemplative performance of this sweeping, ambitious ode to desire will compel fans to keep listening. With the brutality and ignorance of colonialism in Tasmania, set against the backdrop of Dickens' England, the dismal and the beautiful are in stark contrast at once in this important work of the Australian canon.

Summary

The new novel from the internationally acclaimed, best-selling writer Richard Flanagan.

A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is adopted by the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, to show that the savage can be civilized. When Sir John disappears while looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, Lady Jane turns to the great novelist Charles Dickens for help.

Inspired by historical events, Wanting is a haunting meditation about love, loss, and the way life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting.
©2009 Richard Flanagan (P)2009 Bolinda Publishing
Literary Fiction Historical Fiction
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Critic reviews

"The interlaced stories focus on conquering the yearning that exists both in the Aboriginals and the noble English gentlemen, and though Flanagan has a tendency to hammer home his ideas, his prose is strong and precise, and the depiction of desire's effects is sublime." ( Publishers Weekly)

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disappointment

unlike his other books this was a complete disapointment. the link between London and Van Demons land extremely tenuous. language laboured. If this hadn't have been a book for book club I would not have finished it.

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