Review To Name Those Lost: A Novel Executed By Rohan Wilson Formatted As Kindle

novelist Rohan Wilson came roaring out of the starting block with his first novel, sitelink The Roving Party, published inin Australia, and inby Soho Press for the U.
S. market. That first novel described the hunt for aboriginals still residing in Tasmania, Australias southernmost island state, In theth Century, white European settlers began to capture and eliminate to extinction the native black aborigines in Tasmania, calling this period The Black War, The Roving Party reimagines this period using real historical figures and accounts, The book was shortlisted or won several national and regional awards,

The main character in Wilsons second novel, Thomas Toosey, was once a member of one of those roving bands, though what he learned in service was that blacks were residents there first, and that a knife is a powerful inducement.
Toosey remembers his own family with longing, even though his wife sold his alcoholic self down the river for a few quid more than ten years previously, Living rough in Deloraine after leaving the convict town of Port Arthur, he learns via desperate letter from his son William that his wife has died,

The journey to Launceston and the search for his son, who has been living on the street since the death of his mother, reads like a fever dream: very visual, very sweaty, very terrifying.
We are aghast to find Toosey has stolen banknotes from his friend Flynn, and caused a terrible accident to befall Flynn's daughter, Toosey had been looking for enough cash to start a new life away from Tasmania with his son,

Wilsons special skill is making history come alive he sets his personal drama within the context of anrailroad protest in Launceston, He makes it epic: characters struggle with life or death, right or wrong, him or me, now or never, as though they ever had any agency and they were not just playthings for the gods.
There are so many watchers and witnesses in this novel, they take on the character of a chorus in a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean meme, able to shift the action minutely.
Street urchins, hobos and tramps, hotel workers, copsmany folks are watching this personal struggle play out: Thomas Toosey seeking son William, trailed by revengeseeking Flynn, in the middle of a city gone berserk.


The opening lines of this novel are visual enough to describe a film, or a manga comic,

"Her head hit the floorboard, bounced, and a fog of ash billowed, thrown so by the motion of her spade, "

This is Williams mother falling down neardead from a standing position while sweeping the grate, Her son, William, races in shortly after with a growler of stolen brewery beer to give her, only to discover he needs a doctor instead, Racing away to find a doctor, William is waylaid by a cop who wants to put the twelveyearold away for the brewery theft,

Right here, right at the start of this novel, we can feel the tension Wilson sets up for us between a grisly realism and an absurd, immovable, buffoonish cop whose comic deafness derails the childs plans and kills the mother.
The rest of the book follows from this cruel dichotomy: absurd life, spectacular death, and the struggle between them, It almost seems if anyone stopped to think for just a second about what they were struggling for, the fight would go out of them, a legitimate philosophical stance and an accurate way to observe the human condition.

"History is the art by which we lead our lives, "

Once again Wilson has taken a historical moment in Tasmania, looked deeply into its components, and the whole thing bursts into lifeinto flame, as it were, We reimagine convict life in Port Arthur, the muddy streets of Deloraine, the bustle and insincerity of worldly Launcestonand real moral conundrum, Wilson has one of the orphans stand in the shadows, observing the action, knowing more about motivations and outcomes than the combatants engaged in life or death struggle.
That orphan can change everything, Will she

"There is as much ruin comes from love as virtueDo not follow that fool into his hole, He wanted more for you, You need to want more for yourself, "

Wilson won another award for this novel, theVictoria Premiers Literary Award for Fiction, Definitely worthy of attention, his work is big: it encompasses large, important themes, and at the same time, is completely unique, A novel of a father and son in search of each other on the Australian frontier of thes: “Brutal, brilliant, beautiful” Minneapolis StarTribune,

It is the summer of, Launceston, a colonial outpost on the southern Australian island of Tasmania, hovers on the brink of anarchy, teeming with revolutionaries, convicts, drunks, crooked cops, and poor strugglers looking for a break.
Outlaw Thomas Toosey races to this dangerous bedlam to find his motherless twelveyearold son before the city swallows the child whole, but he is pursued by more than just the law.
Hindering his progress at every turn is a man to whom he owes a terrible debt: the vengeful Irishman Fitheal Flynn, whose hooded companion hides a grotesque secret.
. .
Based on real events, this prizewinning novel of vengeance and redemption, set against the sweeping, merciless grandeur

of the frontier, “brings to mind the prose of Cormac McCarthy, Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner and catapults us into the vicious, impoverished world of a colonial town in Tasmania” Minneapolis StarTribune.


“Readers who admired the propulsive plotting, atmospheric sense of place, and fierce family loyalty in Patrick DeWitts The Sisters Brothers and Cormac McCarthys The Road should be equally taken with Wilsons superb novel.
Highly recommended. ” Library Journal starred review

Winner of the Victorian Premiers Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel A sequel to Wilson's previous novel about colonial Tasmania, this story bristles with menace and suspense.
The squalid, brutish world of Launceston and surrounding district in thes is convincingly evoked, Occasional stylistic flaws distracted me but I found the main characters authentic and memorable, with moving glimpses of their halfsuppressed emotional neediness, A legend is born, regenerates, peaks: Rohan Wilson, "No need for no one to shoot no one, " Brutality and squalor are dealt out in equal measure in Rohan Wilson's To Name Those Lost, For anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy, the novel will have a very familiar feel, Rage and revenge propel the story which is set in the isolated, lawless territory of colonial Tasmania, There are a legion of bizarre characters caught up in a vortex of unending senseless violence, Like No Country for Old Men, the book has a certain mesmerizing aspect that keeps you turning the pages, However, unlike a McCarthy's work there was not a single character in To Name Those Lost that I truly cared about or who came alive in my mind's eye.
I have had the pleasure of reading author Rohan Wilsons first two novels in quick succession and am glad I have, The first, The Roving Party, was a very good historical fiction based on actual events that portrayed the brutality Van Diemans Land during that colonys Black Wars, Such was its impact I started this one immediately,
To Name Those Lost brings back the boy from The Roving Party, Thomas Toosey, as a now old man looking for redemption after a brutal life, We follow his quest in his search for his lost son, There is a strong cast of characters that come onto the story, each with a big part to play in Tooseys search,

Rohan Wilson has again somehow written bleak but beautiful prose in what is a more narrative driven approach than his debut novel, I would suggest that those that also like a defined story may find this novel more to their liking than the debut that gave the reader more to think about in thematic terms.

That is not meant to be criticism of this book, There are certainly themes such as the above mentioned redemptive qualities, love for family and the worth of revenge, And like his previous novel mans inhumanity to his fellow man looms large, As with a well written historical novel the reader must learn from the events, I knew nothing of the Launceston Railway Riotsthat play a big part in the telling of this tale, Oh for a time machine!
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Recommended to those that enjoy very good historical novels and to those that have been to sleepy Launceston and had no idea of its historical past.
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