Anyone who has read Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North will know how intensely he researches his subject, how he draws the reader into his narrative and how one is left considering the subject matter long after the novel is over. His writing is uncompromising and often heartbreaking, but his observation of human nature I find remarkable and – spoiler alert – The Sound of One Hand Clapping ends on a note of real optimism.
The story follows three periods in the life of Sonia Buloh: when she is three and her mother walks away from the worker’s hut where the family live, when 16 and trying to forge a new life for herself in Sydney, and finally in 1990 on her return to Tasmania. This Slovenian family tried to settle in a remote highlands area of the island in 1954, part of a largely migrant workforce on a construction site building a new hydroelectric dam. The life is very hard, and the brutal destruction of the natural environment in a sense parallels the suffering of Maria Buloh during Nazi occupation. Bojan Buloh resorts to heavy drinking and violence after his young wife’s disappearance; his desperate sense of alienation leads to alienation from his daughter.
So why read on? Sonia’s inner strength is remarkable as is her ability to forgive a father who is at heart a craftsman who deeply desires to fashion a new relationship with his adult child and baby granddaughter. This is not a book for the faint hearted, much of it is sad and depressing, but I find so much of Flanagan’s writing enriching and beautiful, and one is left with a new insight into Tasmanian history and into the redeeming power of love.
[We have a copy of The Sound of One Hand Clapping in the library.]
