Review: Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

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A big thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for including me in this blog tour and sending me a copy of Flanagan's Question 7. You can find other bloggers reviews on Question 7 below!

Question 7 is a very unusual book. Defiantly slipping between genres it is partly historic, partly autobiographical, partly political and social commentary and partly fiction. It calls to mind the modernist writing of the early 20th century. I think Flanagan certainly succeeded at his project to dissect and debate 'question seven', which is, for those unfamiliar, "Who loves longer, a man or a woman? [...] And why do we do what we do to each other?". Flanagan asks and seeks to answer some of life’s biggest questions. What does it mean to love? What responsibility do we have towards each other and our planet? How does death affect the living? And how do navigate a very messy life? Just to name a few!

I found my experience of reading this book to be quite mixed. Flanagan's writing is compelling and interesting but at times I felt it getting a little wordy, and myself in turn getting a little lost. Furthermore, as Question 7 weaves together many different threads of narratives and ideas, I found myself feeling much more interested and connected to some threads than others. His consideration and thoughts on language and what it means to be a writer, the impact of Hiroshima, and his childhood in Tasmania and the experiences of convicts and aboriginal people were very interesting. However, I felt the narrative thread that focused on H. G. Wells was a wee bit gratuitous and I found it harder to engage with those sections. Perhaps that is because I am not a fan of Wells myself but it felt a lot less connected and grounded to me. That being said I don’t think the quality of writing decreased in those sections, they just weren’t for me.

Overall, I think Question 7 is a fascinating book and if you are a fan of Flanagan, or interested in any of the philosophical subject matter I have mentioned above, then I would still recommend giving it a go! His comments on language and words on page 103 alone made it a worthwhile read for me;

"Words exist to grasp the world and if every day afresh the world eludes them, every tomorrow they are condemned to begin their crazy dance again: words to anchor, the world to fly; words to say it is so, the world to say it is not. And so they tango eternally, words and the world, writers no more than dancing shoes sliding between the dancer and the dance floor."

Flanagan is no doubt a fascinating man with some equally fascinating ideas that feel very fresh and powerful in Question 7.

Love, Grace xx