Wanting

a thieving octopus.

‘That’s how it goes,’ said Garney Walch softly, as he closed her eyes.

There was nothing left of her other than work. He picked her damp body up with hands that were at once very large and very gentle, and, placing it on the sled, he cleared the rags of bark away before laying her down, her head framed between his axe and saw.

She had been seven years old when he first swung her through the air and sat her on his cart and tweaked her toe. She had reminded him then of his dead daughter. She had been beautiful.

He tried to tally the passing years. The world was darkening, the long night was only beginning, a tree dropped a bough, a boobok owl ate a pardalote, and a black swan flew skyward. He dropped his head, his calculations done. She would have been seventeen years old.

‘How it goes,’ he murmured, ‘and keeps on going.’

With the stringybarked back of a hand, the sawyer wiped a dead and milky eye, then stroked the ox on the muzzle and asked it to help him carry the poor child home, her dirty feet jolting over the sled’s back as the ox took up its burden, their light-coloured soles disappearing into the longest night.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel is not a history, nor should it be read as one. It was suggested to me by certain characters and events in the past, but it does not end with them.

Only the barest details of Mathinna’s life are known, and the fate of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition still remains a subject of speculation, as does the precise nature of Charles Dickens’ relationship with Ellen Ternan. Lady Jane Franklin did enlist Dickens to rescue the reputation of Sir John’s expedition from the charge of cannibalism levelled—accurately, it would later prove—by Dr Rae, and Dickens did write a strong riposte that today could be characterised as racist. He did become obsessed with the story of lost Arctic explorers, The Frozen Deep was staged, and as an actor Dickens was a sensation. Ellen Ternan did appear on stage with him. Dickens does seem to have fallen in love with her, and to have left his wife because of that love, and he and Ellen Ternan did pursue a secret life together until his death. Exactly what together means remains debated.

Whether Ellen Ternan had a child to Dickens, as Dickens’ daughter Katy believed, or what Sir John’s feelings were towards Mathinna—if he had any at all—appear to be knowledge now irrecoverable. I have seen no evidence that Mathinna was beaten by the Catechist at Wybalenna, but it is known that other Aboriginal girls were, and one, Fanny Cochrane Smith, did attempt to burn down the Catechist’s house. Mathinna was found drowned in a puddle. There is no record of why or how she drowned.

Although the catastrophe of colonisation led many at the time, both black and white, to believe the Tasmanian Aborigines would die out—a terrible anguish which I have tried to mirror in my novel—they did not. Nor were they absent from the subsequent unfolding of Tasmanian history. Today, around 16,000 Tasmanians identify as Aborigines.

The stories of Mathinna and Dickens, with their odd but undeniable connection, suggested to me a meditation on desire—the cost of its denial, the centrality and force of its power in human affairs. That, and not history, is the true subject of Wanting.

In writing this novel, I have on occasion made free use of sentences and phrases from Dickens’ own work. Those who wish to know more about the historical truth of the characters mentioned can find biographical notes, along with a list of the sources I consulted, at www.richardflanaganwanting.com.au.

Finally, my thanks to Nikki Christer, Julian Welch, Deborah Rogers, Joyce Purtscher and Greg Lehman.

International acclaim for WANTING

“In confident, expert hands, fiction can liberate the past… Richard Flanagan is an exemplary case in point. [A] dense and fascinating novel.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Flanagan’s prose grasps the jugular of history… A startling meditation on the tragic cost of emotional repression and the physical violence and psychic disfigurement to which the constraint of self-expression give rise.”

—The Times (London)

“A compelling novel about love and loss.”

—ELLE Canada

“A beautifully constructed fugue on desire and its denial, on the protean forms assumed by passionate natures wrestling with 19th century dictates of reason and duty.”

—The Times Literary Supplement

“As usual, Flanagan is brilliant at re-creating this ‘weird land predating time, with its vulgar rainbow colours, its vile, huge forests and bizarre animals that seemed to have been lost since Adam’s exile.’”

—The Washington Post

“The novel is stylishly, even beautifully written, and one stops to savour many a well-turned phrase.”

—Edmonton Journal

“This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more…Flanagan’s storytelling puts the heart back into history. It is infused with a massive strength of feeling, with anger and compassion.”

—Sydney Morning Herald

“In Wanting, Richard Flanagan has written an exquisite, profoundly moving, intricately structured meditation about the desire for human connection in its many forms.”

—Los Angeles Times

“A novel of singular beauty. Flanagan’s virtuoso handling of historical fact and storytelling, combined with his understanding of human nature, confirms that in works such as this, fiction achieves high art.”

—The Irish Times

“Flanagan sets his novel in the wilds of nineteenth-century Tasmania and evokes its inhabitants with exquisite precision…Flanagan forges…an entirely unified meditation on desire, ‘the cost of its denial, the centrality