QUESTION 7

A work of non fiction but it has all the complexity of emotional heft of a great novel Question 7 sets the high water mark for what the genre of memoir can be Sunday Times There s so much in Flanagan s beautiful unclassifiable novel cum memoir That it is a masterpiece is without question Observer This is a book about the choices we make and the chain reaction that follows By way of H G Wells and Rebecca West s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped this daisy chain of events reaches fission when a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die Flanagan has created a love song to his island home and his parents and the terrible past that delivered him to that place Through a hypnotic melding of dream history science and memory Question 7 shows how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves I was fascinated troubled and enchanted by this strange and extraordinary work I can think of nothing else quite like it Sarah Perry Mighty in its rage and tenderness his most momentous book yet Laura Cumming Spectacular It