I love Australian author Richard Flanagan. His Booker Prize winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) is one of my all-time favourite novels. I have had the good fortune to see him speak at various festivals and events. I have read most of his work and have tremendous admiration for his advocacy.
A few weeks ago I finished his latest book, the strangely enticing Question 7 (2023). Ever since I have been mulling it over, trying to figure out what I would say about it. This is a book that does not fit neatly into any genre - its is a memoir, a history, autofiction, and more. There were parts that I loved, parts that sent me down search engine rabbit-holes, and parts that I struggled to make sense of. This is a book that requires meditation and mulling, consuming in short bursts and savouring over time.
The title Question 7 is from a Chekov story in which a mathematical problem about trains departing at certain times ends with the unanswerable question 'who loves longer, a man or a woman?'. Flanagan writes that this question 'is about how the world from which we presume to derive meaning and purpose is not the true world.' (p24). Question 7 is Flanagan's quest for meaning.
'why we keep returning to beginnings-why we seek the single thread we might pull to unravel the tapestry we call our life in the hope that behind it we will find the truth of why.
But there is no true. There is only why.
And when we look closer we see that behind that why is just another tapestry. And behind it another, and another, until we arrive at oblivion.' (p3)
In his quest for why, Flanagan reflects on his childhood in rural Tasmania and the impact of colonisation on the island. He tells of how his grandmother's family were taunted for being descendants of convicts. Growing up, Flanagan's family did not speak of his father's time as a prisoner of war, forced to work on the notorious Burma Death Railway. His father was then interred at the Ohama camp and would have certainly died there if the atom bomb had not been dropped on Hiroshima, leading to the surrender of the Japanese and release of prisoners of war.
Flanagan's search for meaning weaves in and out in Question 7 in a series of ifs. If the bomb was not dropped, he would not exist as his father would have died in Japan. He reflects on his own near-death experience when he was trapped in a kayak on a remote Tasmanian river. If he had not had this experience he may not have written his first novel, Death of a River Guide (1994) which set him on his career path.
Beyond this personal story, the whys take us deeper. Question 7 also presents us with the affair HG Wells had with Rebecca West which led Wells to write The World Set Free (1914) which influenced physicist Leo Szilard to patent neutron chain reactions which influenced the Manhattan Project which led to Hiroshima, without which Flanagan would not exist.
This is a fascinating intellectual, emotional and curious book, written in bite-sized segments, stream-of-consciousness style. It is a mosaic, in which each irregular piece comes together to reveal a beautiful whole. For me, the irregular pieces were better than the whole - or to use Flanagan's analogy, I guess I preferred the threads to the whole tapestry. I am glad I read Question 7. It is a reminder of Flanagan's incredible talent as a writer.