Wanting by Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan’s latest novel is an engrossing and evocative exploration of desire and its effects, both positive and negative. It also examines how ideas about desire inform the dichotomy of civilization vs. savagery. Although that may seem heavy, the book is anything but dry. Flanagan uses the intertwining stories of two extremely different characters to great and humanizing effect.

In the first story, set in Tasmania in the 1830s, a young Aboriginal girl is interned in an English “settlement” with her people. The visiting wife of the Governor takes a liking to the girl and decides to make an experiment of her, to see if education and proper upbringing can make a savage civil. Twenty years later in London, the same Englishwoman engages the services of Charles Dickens to defend the reputation of her missing explorer husband against charges of cannibalism. Dickens writes a scathing reply to the accuser and becomes so enamored of the story that he develops it into a play, a fictionalized vision of Artic exploration that embodies the oh-so English values of restraint and rejection of desire. At the same time, he struggles with his own desires and passions, mourning the loss of his infant daughter and observing the demise of his marriage.

The intertwining of these two plots results in a poetic and complex portrait of the ways people attempt to constrain or fulfill their desires, making clear that it is not only savages who succumb and that the rejection of desire does not make one civilized. Flanagan sometimes seems to drive his theme a bit too hard, as if he does not trust his own story to get across its point, but this is a minor quibble. Wanting is a fascinating novel that will leave you aching along with the characters and still wanting more.

Reviewed by Zade

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