Question 7 (2024)

Why this one?

Question 7 won the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which is evidently an extremely reliable barometer of what’s worth reading in the non-fiction world, in spite of the obvious issues with its sponsor (Flanagan postponed acceptance of the financial component of this year’s Prize pending further discussions with the organisers over Baillie Gifford’s ethics). His win makes him the first person ever to win both this award and the Booker, which he picked up in 2014 for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, one of my top ten Booker winners of all time.

Richard Miller Flanagan (1961-; active 1985- ), was born in Tasmania. He grew up in the remote mining town of Roseberry on Tasmania's western coast, and was born with severe hearing loss which was corrected when he was six. He left school at 16 but returned to study at the University of Tasmania and then gained a Rhodes Scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford.

He began by writing non-fiction works, including several political works and a ghostwritten autobiography of Australian con-man John Friedrich, who killed himself in the middle of the book's writing. His first novel was 1994's Death of a River Guide, followed by the best-selling and much-lauded The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997). His third novel Gould's Book of Fish won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and he took home the Booker with The Narrow Road to the Deep North, his sixth. Along the way he has also written more non-fiction, some controversial, and worked in film, including co-writing for Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008).

Thoughts, etc.

Question 7 is a very difficult book to sum up. In simple terms, it’s a memoir, allowing Flanagan to dig deeper into themes he has explored in some of his novels, such as his relationship with his father (whose experiences on the Burmese Death Railway in WW2 were fictionalised as part of The Narrow Road…) and a near-death experience while kayaking as a young man (which informed his debut). But it’s also much broader than that. He takes anything but a direct approach to analysing his existence, taking us on a journey through the romantic liaisons of H. G. Wells, the (in Flanagan’s telling, not unrelated) development of the atom bomb and its detonation over Hiroshima (ending the war which would otherwise likely have led to the death of his father) and further back in time to the Tasmanian genocide and its legacy.

It’s difficult to say much more without giving away the twists and turns of what is a compelling page-turner, another Baillie Gifford winner that very much exemplifies its motto that ‘the best stories are true’. It could very easily have been packaged as fiction, given its grand scope, hugely memorable characters and profound existential themes. Indeed, there are sections in here acknowledged by Flanagan as such, notably some of Wells’ conversations. What it rather amounts to though is an expansive reimagining of the purpose of non-fiction, subverting its form and conventions to deploy historical writing, cultural analysis and memoir to both explore grander questions about the nature of humanity and more personal ones about the quirks of fate that have led to one even existing, and continuing to exist.

At a point there’s a reference to Kurt Vonnegut (via a digression on his Cat’s Cradle) which feels fitting in some senses. Most notably, there’s the rather Tralfamadorian notion of all of time coexisting at once, which Flanagan refers to throughout (acknowledging its real-world philosophical origins rather than Vonnegut’s science fiction, but the shadow is clearly there) as a mechanism for exploring notions of free will and coming to terms with the inevitability of history and the mind-bending coincidences that lead us to our present existence. It’s also there as an aid to meditations on (and a form of acceptance of) the collapsing environment in which we all presently find ourselves (Flanagan describes himself as being ‘born into the Autumn of things’ and there is a necessarily apocalyptic tone throughout). Bringing us back to Vonnegut, Flanagan’s use of ‘That’s life’ as a semi-ironically ‘cathartic’ coda to many of the most incomprehensibly tragic paragraphs in his book feels deliberately indebted to Vonnegut’s ‘So it goes’.

All of the above I enjoyed greatly, being a long-time Vonnegut lover. There’s another more apparent literary allusion threaded through the book which I struggled with a bit more, being the titular ‘question 7’. Its origin is clear enough; drawn from a series of ‘mathematical problems’ derived by Chekhov, parodic of the style of question appearing in school maths exams, but with an apparent non-sequitur question as their conclusion, in this case a version of the phrase ‘who loves longer?’ My simplistic reading of Flanagan’s deployment of this quotation is probably too literal; that writing is not science and cannot provide answers, only ask meaningful questions. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but in any case I felt that as a central ‘hook’ on which to hang an otherwise brilliant piece of writing, it lacked a bit of clarity and substance. But perhaps that’s the point.

Other than that, this is a stunning book with a little of everything thrown in, and all done with a masterful hand. The vivid depiction of the build up to the atomic age, and its connection to Wells’ science fiction, is absolutely gripping to read. Similarly, his telling of the genocide of the Tasmanian aboriginal population by British colonialists (or here, ‘Martians’) is eye-opening, and again notable for its role in Flanagan’s game of ‘join the dots’ (in which the lines seem mainly to be being drawn by Wells). His depictions of his family, and also his own encounters with various Japanese people with a connection to his father’s wartime trauma, are all beautifully done. And a personal highlight for me was a brief diversion to his time at Oxford (among the ‘Martians’) and in particular an anecdote recounting an encounter with a certain ‘B——’.

I read this over the Christmas holidays, and it’s far from a festive read. The overall tone is of sorrow and devastation, with Flanagan using his writing in an attempt to wrangle a kind of consolation in the face of the apocalyptic moments which have happened, are happening, continue to happen in that Tralfamadorian sense. It’s certainly not a book that proposes any answers or gives any great hope, save from a kind of solace in the present moment and in the connections we form along the way. If that sounds a little trite, that’s down to my poor attempt at summarising - Question 7 is anything but.

Score

9.5

One of the highlights of my year’s reading. A reminder that I should read more non-fiction - although I very much expect to be disappointed with whatever I pick up next, in comparison with the form-transcending experience of reading this one.

Next up

Back to more familiar fictitious worlds in some form.