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To Name Those Lost: A Novel
A novel of a father and son in search of each other on the Australian frontier of the 1870s: “Brutal, brilliant, beautiful” ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune ).
It is the summer of 1874. 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 twelve-year-old 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 prize-winning 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 Star-Tribune ).
“Readers who admired the propulsive plotting, atmospheric sense of place, and fierce family loyalty in Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road should be equally taken with Wilson’s superb novel. Highly recommended.”― Library Journal (starred review)
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel
It is the summer of 1874. 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 twelve-year-old 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 prize-winning 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 Star-Tribune ).
“Readers who admired the propulsive plotting, atmospheric sense of place, and fierce family loyalty in Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road should be equally taken with Wilson’s superb novel. Highly recommended.”― Library Journal (starred review)
Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Award for Best Novel
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2017
17 people are currently reading
491 people want to read
About the author
Rohan Wilson
7 books38 followersRohan Wilson lived a long, mostly lonely, life until a lucky turn of events led him to take up a teaching position in Japan where he met his wife. They have a son who loves books, as all children should. They live in Launceston but don't know why.
Rohan holds degrees and diplomas from the universities of Tasmania, Southern Queensland and Melbourne. The Roving Party is his first book. He can be found on Twitter: @rohan_wilson.
Rohan holds degrees and diplomas from the universities of Tasmania, Southern Queensland and Melbourne. The Roving Party is his first book. He can be found on Twitter: @rohan_wilson.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
February 7, 2017
Australian novelist Rohan Wilson came roaring out of the starting block with his first novel,
The Roving Party
, published in 2011 in Australia, and in 2014 by Soho Press for the U.S. market. That first novel described the hunt for aboriginals still residing in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island state. In the 19th 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 Wilson’s 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.
Wilson’s special skill is making history come alive; he sets his personal drama within the context of an 1874 railroad 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, cops—many folks are watching this personal struggle play out: Thomas Toosey seeking son William, trailed by revenge-seeking 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.
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 child’s 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.
The main character in Wilson’s 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.
Wilson’s special skill is making history come alive; he sets his personal drama within the context of an 1874 railroad 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, cops—many folks are watching this personal struggle play out: Thomas Toosey seeking son William, trailed by revenge-seeking 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 William’s mother falling down near-dead 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 twelve-year-old 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 child’s 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 life—into flame, as it were. We reimagine convict life in Port Arthur, the muddy streets of Deloraine, the bustle and insincerity of worldly Launceston…and 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 virtue…Do 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, the 2015 Victoria Premier’s 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.
July 4, 2020
I have had the pleasure of reading author Rohan Wilson’s 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 colony’s 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 Toosey’s 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 man’s 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 Riots 1874 that play a big part in the telling of this tale. Oh for a time machine!
http://launcestonhistory.org.au/wp-co...
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.
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 Toosey’s 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 man’s 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 Riots 1874 that play a big part in the telling of this tale. Oh for a time machine!
http://launcestonhistory.org.au/wp-co...
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.
January 19, 2016
I try not to overdo the superlatives when it comes to discussing books, but Rowan Wilson’s new novel To Name Those Lost is magnificent. Somehow he has managed to capture both the brutality and the redemptive promise of early Tasmania in a superb novel that had me captivated from the moment I started reading it.
Thomas Toosey is a veteran of the Black War about which Wilson wrote so evocatively in The Roving Party. He is a hard man, brutalised by years of poverty and violence, his own childhood destroyed by life on the Tasmanian frontier:
His first sight of the island as a child of fourteen sent out for thieving two overcoats in the winter of 1827 was the sandstone buildings studding the hill above the harbour in Hobart town and when they brought him above decks of the Woodford in iron fetters and set him aboard a longboat for the shore he’d thought Hobart a pissing version of his own Blackpool, the inlaying of warehouse masonry much like the stores on Talbot Road, the stark shapes of houses near the same, but then the winter mist parted from the mountain peak above and he knew he was in venerable country, as old as rock, and it wasn’t long before he became indentured to the frontiersman John Batman who ran a trade in victualling the army, and here the boy Thomas learned how the island’s wilder parts truly belonged to the tribal blacks, a displaced people taking refuge in the hills, and for a government bounty and to secure his land this frontiersman meant to hunt them by whatever means just or unjust, bloody or brave, and he marshalled a party of transportees and black trackers and put into the scrub armed for war and war it was, a bloody war, in which all hands were soiled and Thomas’s no less than another’s for a killer now he was, an easy killer, and yet while he was diminished by it, made less in God’s eyes and his own, he saw in the bullet, the knife, and the club a power that could make a man his own master. (p. 55)
(You can see in this excerpt Wilson’s masterful use of prose which conveys a sense of the 19th century and its rugged idiom without overdoing it).
The use of that power lands Toosey a 10-year sentence in Port Arthur, further hardening his heart. But this brute receives a pitiful message from his son, twelve years old, and motherless now.
Thomas Toosey is a veteran of the Black War about which Wilson wrote so evocatively in The Roving Party. He is a hard man, brutalised by years of poverty and violence, his own childhood destroyed by life on the Tasmanian frontier:
His first sight of the island as a child of fourteen sent out for thieving two overcoats in the winter of 1827 was the sandstone buildings studding the hill above the harbour in Hobart town and when they brought him above decks of the Woodford in iron fetters and set him aboard a longboat for the shore he’d thought Hobart a pissing version of his own Blackpool, the inlaying of warehouse masonry much like the stores on Talbot Road, the stark shapes of houses near the same, but then the winter mist parted from the mountain peak above and he knew he was in venerable country, as old as rock, and it wasn’t long before he became indentured to the frontiersman John Batman who ran a trade in victualling the army, and here the boy Thomas learned how the island’s wilder parts truly belonged to the tribal blacks, a displaced people taking refuge in the hills, and for a government bounty and to secure his land this frontiersman meant to hunt them by whatever means just or unjust, bloody or brave, and he marshalled a party of transportees and black trackers and put into the scrub armed for war and war it was, a bloody war, in which all hands were soiled and Thomas’s no less than another’s for a killer now he was, an easy killer, and yet while he was diminished by it, made less in God’s eyes and his own, he saw in the bullet, the knife, and the club a power that could make a man his own master. (p. 55)
(You can see in this excerpt Wilson’s masterful use of prose which conveys a sense of the 19th century and its rugged idiom without overdoing it).
The use of that power lands Toosey a 10-year sentence in Port Arthur, further hardening his heart. But this brute receives a pitiful message from his son, twelve years old, and motherless now.
November 12, 2014
‘Her head hit the floorboards, bounced, and a fog of ash billowed, thrown so by the motion of her spade.’
It is 1874. Tasmania is in transition from its penal origins: transportation ceased in 1853. But while the ruling classes are focussed on the structure and law of their society and increasing their wealth, there are a significant number of people struggling for their existence. Many are former convicts. In early 1874, pandemonium broke out in Launceston. The government had imposed a levy on those living near the Deloraine-Launceston railway line after the collapse of the company that built it. Those who riot cause damage, but cannot prevail against the large and well-armed police force.
‘The rioting was confined to the rabble and larrikin classes, scarcely any ratepayer taking part.’ (The Mercury, 9 February 1874)
This is the background to the events in Rohan Wilson’s novel. William Toosey is 12 years old when his mother dies suddenly. He writes to his father Thomas, asking for help. Thomas Toosey (who appeared as a boy in Rohan Wilson’s first novel ‘The Roving Party’) is a grey-haired labourer who has spent 10 years in the Port Arthur Penitentiary, convicted of a dreadful crime. He has stolen £200 in banknotes from Fitheal Flynn, with whom he was in prison, and his three daughters. In short, although Toosey sets off for Launceston to find his son, he appears to be beyond redemption. Flynn, accompanied by one of his daughters, disguised as a male and covered by a hood, sets off after Toosey. Sure, he wants his money back but there’s more to the story than that. Flynn and Toosey are both fathers seeking to make amends for their actions in the past by making provision for their children. Toosey is desperate to find William, and acutely aware of the dangers that befall orphans in the streets. Flynn is keen to track down Toosey: he wants his own retribution.
Rohan Wilson brings the Launceston of the 1870s to life: from Cimitiere Street through the City Park to Princes Square, along Brisbane Street and Charles Street, across Windmill Hill and then later back through the town and across the river into the slums of Invermay. The place and street names remain, and much of the landscape is recognisable today. It’s a dark, bleak story brilliantly told, set in a dark time in Launceston’s colonial history.
‘History is the art by which we live our lives, he said. You have your history and I have mine.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
It is 1874. Tasmania is in transition from its penal origins: transportation ceased in 1853. But while the ruling classes are focussed on the structure and law of their society and increasing their wealth, there are a significant number of people struggling for their existence. Many are former convicts. In early 1874, pandemonium broke out in Launceston. The government had imposed a levy on those living near the Deloraine-Launceston railway line after the collapse of the company that built it. Those who riot cause damage, but cannot prevail against the large and well-armed police force.
‘The rioting was confined to the rabble and larrikin classes, scarcely any ratepayer taking part.’ (The Mercury, 9 February 1874)
This is the background to the events in Rohan Wilson’s novel. William Toosey is 12 years old when his mother dies suddenly. He writes to his father Thomas, asking for help. Thomas Toosey (who appeared as a boy in Rohan Wilson’s first novel ‘The Roving Party’) is a grey-haired labourer who has spent 10 years in the Port Arthur Penitentiary, convicted of a dreadful crime. He has stolen £200 in banknotes from Fitheal Flynn, with whom he was in prison, and his three daughters. In short, although Toosey sets off for Launceston to find his son, he appears to be beyond redemption. Flynn, accompanied by one of his daughters, disguised as a male and covered by a hood, sets off after Toosey. Sure, he wants his money back but there’s more to the story than that. Flynn and Toosey are both fathers seeking to make amends for their actions in the past by making provision for their children. Toosey is desperate to find William, and acutely aware of the dangers that befall orphans in the streets. Flynn is keen to track down Toosey: he wants his own retribution.
Rohan Wilson brings the Launceston of the 1870s to life: from Cimitiere Street through the City Park to Princes Square, along Brisbane Street and Charles Street, across Windmill Hill and then later back through the town and across the river into the slums of Invermay. The place and street names remain, and much of the landscape is recognisable today. It’s a dark, bleak story brilliantly told, set in a dark time in Launceston’s colonial history.
‘History is the art by which we live our lives, he said. You have your history and I have mine.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 24, 2015
I've spent a number of years immersed in the details of Tasmanian history. This novel gathered together historical elements and brought them all vividly to life. The characters are engaging in their often desperate journeys and the account of Launceston engulfed in rioting provides a vivid backdrop. This is a great read for anyone interested in historical drama and the anarchic and often disparate elements of colonial life.
March 23, 2016
Wow. Rohan Wilson is producing books covering the days of the Wild West of Tasmania as brutal as Cormac Mccarthy.
In Wilson's second book, Thomas Toosey has lead a brutal life and cares little about the lives of others; except for the son he has left in Launceston and now journeys to find him to start a new life. But Toosey has robbed an old lag and former mate Fitheal Flynn who is now tracking him with his daughter to revenge his lost. His daughter has been seriously damaged, first by being crushed by a charging cow and then when she is pushed into a fire by Toosey when he enters and robs Flynn's house.
They all meet in Launceston during the riots of 1874 when the locals protested against a levy to pay for the Deloraine railway.
Wilson captures the poverty of the the underprivileged, the harshness of the police and the violence that ruled the life of the poor. I could taste the dirt, blood and grit.
In Wilson's second book, Thomas Toosey has lead a brutal life and cares little about the lives of others; except for the son he has left in Launceston and now journeys to find him to start a new life. But Toosey has robbed an old lag and former mate Fitheal Flynn who is now tracking him with his daughter to revenge his lost. His daughter has been seriously damaged, first by being crushed by a charging cow and then when she is pushed into a fire by Toosey when he enters and robs Flynn's house.
They all meet in Launceston during the riots of 1874 when the locals protested against a levy to pay for the Deloraine railway.
Wilson captures the poverty of the the underprivileged, the harshness of the police and the violence that ruled the life of the poor. I could taste the dirt, blood and grit.
January 12, 2015
I was anticipating this novel after I enjoyed Rohan Wilson's debut novel The Roving Party so much, and it was worth the wait. This new novel could be Tasmania's answer to the American tradition of Westerns. Set in the 1870s, in Tasmania, there is a cat-and-mouse chase for stolen money, blurred lines in the battle of good v evil, and with wealthy residents in grand homes and hotels while impoverished urchins and vagrants search for food and huddle beneath bridges, Launceston seems like the last frontier of civilisation. It's fast-paced action is not for the faint hearted- and I loved it as much as I did his first book. I especially recommend it to anyone who has lived in or visited Tasmania - so great to read a book set in my home state.
March 25, 2015
When an author has as stunning a debut as Rohan Wilson did with “The Roving Party”, there’s always the fear that the follow-up will disappoint. Did every idea he had go into his first effort? How will he do under the pressure of a deadline? Was it simply a fluke? Never have I seen such fears as comprehensively dispelled as with “To Name Those Lost”.
Not only has Wilson maintained and improved upon the sparse, unforgiving brutality of the prose in his previous work, he has stepped up his pacing, characterisation and general versatility. In choosing essentially the same setting and time period for his second novel as he did with the first, Wilson ran the risk of the idea seeming dry or re-hashed; it doesn’t at all.
This novel has the same brooding, serious quality as the “The Roving Party”, but is organised in such a way as to be a genuine page-turner, a rare quality for books of this type. It’s grim, depressing stuff, but infused with a kind of beauty and vitality that stops it being too dense. In fact it possesses quite a few of the qualities that made fellow Tasmanian Richard Flanagan’s “The Narrow Road To The Deep North” so extraordinary. I can only hope Wilson begins to receive some measure of the same kind of praise, as is very much deserved.
“In time Jane dreamt of the cold dead in the earth far removed, and far above, among the mounds, hearts that beat hot like coals in a burning hearth and when the fire dies the ash collects, always more dust than ember, more death than life, for that is the way. And the chiefly gift of parent to child is this, to bed down the land with their ash and make a place where fire will breathe and be warm, and the debt is told in beads of white smoke, the furrowing heat. And the sound of love is to name those lost who lived for others.”
Not only has Wilson maintained and improved upon the sparse, unforgiving brutality of the prose in his previous work, he has stepped up his pacing, characterisation and general versatility. In choosing essentially the same setting and time period for his second novel as he did with the first, Wilson ran the risk of the idea seeming dry or re-hashed; it doesn’t at all.
This novel has the same brooding, serious quality as the “The Roving Party”, but is organised in such a way as to be a genuine page-turner, a rare quality for books of this type. It’s grim, depressing stuff, but infused with a kind of beauty and vitality that stops it being too dense. In fact it possesses quite a few of the qualities that made fellow Tasmanian Richard Flanagan’s “The Narrow Road To The Deep North” so extraordinary. I can only hope Wilson begins to receive some measure of the same kind of praise, as is very much deserved.
“In time Jane dreamt of the cold dead in the earth far removed, and far above, among the mounds, hearts that beat hot like coals in a burning hearth and when the fire dies the ash collects, always more dust than ember, more death than life, for that is the way. And the chiefly gift of parent to child is this, to bed down the land with their ash and make a place where fire will breathe and be warm, and the debt is told in beads of white smoke, the furrowing heat. And the sound of love is to name those lost who lived for others.”
March 22, 2021
I picked this novel up because it was one of the few out there that takes place in Tasmania (which we are visiting in 2022). Despite its 4* review on Amazon.com, I just couldn't get 100% into this story. The author's writing style is a bit like staccato -- short and fast -- and it doesn't flow. Some sentences last a half a page. The dialogue isn't in quotes. I've noticed that some authors no longer use quotations to designate a conversation. I don't know where this started, but it's something I haven't gotten used to.
The story itself is not very compelling. It's basically an old-style Western, with Tasmanian characters. Since Tasmania was originally a penal colony for the British (and other European nations), most of the country was settled by unsavory characters.
Though I found it good enough to finish, I wasn't enthralled.
The story itself is not very compelling. It's basically an old-style Western, with Tasmanian characters. Since Tasmania was originally a penal colony for the British (and other European nations), most of the country was settled by unsavory characters.
Though I found it good enough to finish, I wasn't enthralled.
October 26, 2021
Well, this is fantastic. I enjoyed Wilson's first book, The Roving Party, but this is even better. On one hand it is the Australian Blood Meridian, its author our Cormac McCarthy. On the other hand it is a rollicking adventure story with numerous well-drawn characters and a pulsating plot. To Name Those Lost is simply one of the best Australian novels I have read.
SECOND READ - I don't disagree with what I wrote before.
SECOND READ - I don't disagree with what I wrote before.
April 25, 2017
You may have to be Aussie--or even better Tassie--to read this. I liked the idea but the dialect from late 19th century Tasmania that was used by the former convicts is tough to decode. Once past the language barrier, there's a strong story of relationships and of social class even in the backwater of Launceston.
June 5, 2022
Ai lu ce livre pas du tout pour moi car on me l’avait conseillé mais en fait je pense que si ça avait été un film bien tourné ça m’aurait peut-être plu. Trop « western », trop de bagarres, trop de clichés …. Pourtant le style est excellent, les personnages sont bien campés
April 15, 2015
Two men with revenge in their hearts; two children, dearly loved and damaged. This is a grim tale, visceral and unlovely. Ultimately it is a story of two men with criminal pasts, the love they have for their children, and their determination to protect and rescue them from the morass in which they are engulfed. Set in Colonial Tasmania, where ex-convicts seem to constitute the majority of the population, and life is desperate, for orphaned children and working men alike. Thomas Toosey and Fitheal Flynn know well the dark side of life, and are desperate enough to want to save their children from the direness of their environment - and in so doing set themselves against each other. At counterpoint to the squalor and immorality are the parading, moralistic Rechabites complaining about the avarice of the governing bodies. And over this tapestry is a life and death struggle to survive. Tremendously evocative of the savageness of just existing in a remote outpost, where law and order are barely maintained. Strong overtones of a western novel; sweaty, smoky and dirty with hints of eucalyptus. Truly a page turner and well worth a read.
October 28, 2014
Wow. It's hard to talk about this book without spoiling the surprises, but I'll try. Thomas Toosey is searching for his son who is a street kid in Launceston in 1874. His wife has died and left William alone. But that's only half the story. Thomas is also being pursued by Flynn, an Irish ex-convict who is seeking his revenge for a wrong that Toosey has committed in the recent past.
The basic setup is becomes more and more complicated as things go wrong and Toosey becomes more desperate. I found myself both liking Toosey and feeling a bit horrified at what he is capable of. He is mean, but you can understand why.
At several points I got shivers up my spine. There is a depth of emotion here that is almost unbearable at times. Toosey's love for his son rings so true and honest that you feel his pain. When the time comes for things to be settled up, and justice to be handed out, you almost have to look away.
Anyway, go read it. You won't be sorry.
The basic setup is becomes more and more complicated as things go wrong and Toosey becomes more desperate. I found myself both liking Toosey and feeling a bit horrified at what he is capable of. He is mean, but you can understand why.
At several points I got shivers up my spine. There is a depth of emotion here that is almost unbearable at times. Toosey's love for his son rings so true and honest that you feel his pain. When the time comes for things to be settled up, and justice to be handed out, you almost have to look away.
Anyway, go read it. You won't be sorry.
April 12, 2015
From a review I posted on The Reading Room:
I loved this book from reading the preview by Allen & Unwin on Facebook, and was grateful to win the competition to review the book.
The first chapter made me NEED to know what happened to William, and his father. I was also enamoured with the writing of Wilson and had a deep desire to consume more.
The book did not disappoint. Wilson has a true gift for writing. I first thought to myself it was like reading poetry, but more than that, it was like watching an opera... the story itself wasn't overly exciting, but Wilson's flair for language is truly magical.
You can read other reviews to discover what the story is about, but I recommend not reading too much about the novel, just read it and see if you too can't help but fall in love with this novel because of the evocative use of language - the best I have read for some time.
I loved this book from reading the preview by Allen & Unwin on Facebook, and was grateful to win the competition to review the book.
The first chapter made me NEED to know what happened to William, and his father. I was also enamoured with the writing of Wilson and had a deep desire to consume more.
The book did not disappoint. Wilson has a true gift for writing. I first thought to myself it was like reading poetry, but more than that, it was like watching an opera... the story itself wasn't overly exciting, but Wilson's flair for language is truly magical.
You can read other reviews to discover what the story is about, but I recommend not reading too much about the novel, just read it and see if you too can't help but fall in love with this novel because of the evocative use of language - the best I have read for some time.
February 2, 2020
Very good. A dark and often unsettling look at a piece of colonial Tasmania, through the eyes of a few very damaged individuals. Every time I get romantic or nostalgic about the past, I read a book like this and am yanked into feeling desperately grateful for the era we live in, problems and all. Wilson is a very strong writer, and not only brings a great sense of place and time to this book, but develops his characters well. I didn't find either of the main characters sympathetic in the least though, which is often something I enjoy in a book .
January 1, 2016
If you thought life was tough in 'The Roving Party', you'll be more or less prepared for a more urban-based bleakness here. Or maybe not. Less lyrical moments without the sense of wild landscape of the earlier book, compensated by some interludes that almost evoke magic realism but which are quickly beaten into submission as action resumes. A brute of a book in many senses -- but I couldn't put it down (a one-night read) and my head was in its spaces for days afterwards.
January 25, 2015
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 the 1870s is convincingly evoked. Occasional stylistic flaws distracted me but I found the main characters authentic and memorable, with moving glimpses of their half-suppressed emotional neediness.
March 7, 2017
Wilson's writing is like moonlight on a sharp blade, his story a wine barreled for so many years that when it is brought forth it is thick on the tongue. Wilson truly "names those lost", gives them voice and breath so real we can smell the sweat of their desperation.
The toughest most powerful book I've read since David Vann's Goat Mountain or Courtney Collins' The Untold.
The toughest most powerful book I've read since David Vann's Goat Mountain or Courtney Collins' The Untold.
January 9, 2015
An engrossing, gritty and emotionally satisfying novel.
December 29, 2017
4.5 stars. A violent man searches for his motherless son while being pursued by a man he has wronged. Set in 1874 Tasmania.
February 28, 2015
A legend is born, regenerates, peaks: Rohan Wilson. "No need for no one to shoot no one."
January 2, 2018
TO NAME THOSE LOST, Rohan Wilson, Allen & Unwin, 2014, pb, 297 pp, ISBN 9781743318324
Wilson’s second historical fiction novel is set in 1874 Launceston, a colonial town on the brink of anarchy.
We follow the experiences of several strange and desperate characters as they seek each other. Thomas Toosey is a violent man with a checkered past, searching for his twelve year old son, William, who’s alone in Launceston after the death of his mother. Young William is trying to keep one step ahead of corrupt police, child protection authorities and pedaphiles, while hoping his father comes to rescue him. An Irish convict, Fitheal Flynn, and his mysterious hooded companion, are on the hunt for Thomas Toosey to settle an old grudge and reclaim some stolen bank notes. Jane Hall, a crippled young woman, has been forced into prostitution by loan sharks, along with her alcoholic mother. She’s searching for Toosey because Flynn has offered money to buy out her mother’s loan if she passes on knowledge about Toosey’s whereabouts.
These odd misfits are drawn into Launceston, on the eve of a violent public rebellion. Wilson vividly paints a picture of a town in complete chaos, where everyone has a hand to mouth existence and the ugly side of human nature is never too far away. The dominant theme is that of family ties and the lengths that a father will go to protect his child. Not everyone makes it out alive and we are kept guessing to the end about the fate of every character.
Wilson’s writing is raw and sharp, at times short sentences devoid of adjectives, in a postmodern literary style. Frequently used dialogue employs some vernacular, but no punctuation or character attribution, requiring the reader to concentrate to work out who was speaking. He successfully transitioned between the various characters and kept the pace moving forward.
I’ll be seeking out his first novel, The Roving Party, which won the 2011 Vogel Award and was also shortlisted for the 2011 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for Fiction and looking forward with anticipation to a third.
Christine Childs
Wilson’s second historical fiction novel is set in 1874 Launceston, a colonial town on the brink of anarchy.
We follow the experiences of several strange and desperate characters as they seek each other. Thomas Toosey is a violent man with a checkered past, searching for his twelve year old son, William, who’s alone in Launceston after the death of his mother. Young William is trying to keep one step ahead of corrupt police, child protection authorities and pedaphiles, while hoping his father comes to rescue him. An Irish convict, Fitheal Flynn, and his mysterious hooded companion, are on the hunt for Thomas Toosey to settle an old grudge and reclaim some stolen bank notes. Jane Hall, a crippled young woman, has been forced into prostitution by loan sharks, along with her alcoholic mother. She’s searching for Toosey because Flynn has offered money to buy out her mother’s loan if she passes on knowledge about Toosey’s whereabouts.
These odd misfits are drawn into Launceston, on the eve of a violent public rebellion. Wilson vividly paints a picture of a town in complete chaos, where everyone has a hand to mouth existence and the ugly side of human nature is never too far away. The dominant theme is that of family ties and the lengths that a father will go to protect his child. Not everyone makes it out alive and we are kept guessing to the end about the fate of every character.
Wilson’s writing is raw and sharp, at times short sentences devoid of adjectives, in a postmodern literary style. Frequently used dialogue employs some vernacular, but no punctuation or character attribution, requiring the reader to concentrate to work out who was speaking. He successfully transitioned between the various characters and kept the pace moving forward.
I’ll be seeking out his first novel, The Roving Party, which won the 2011 Vogel Award and was also shortlisted for the 2011 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for Fiction and looking forward with anticipation to a third.
Christine Childs
August 6, 2019
I find this book to be a bit difficult to understand. Especially since I've never been to Australia or any other area where the novel takes place. The language the author chooses to use would likely resonate (and make sense) for those who are Aussie themselves. But for those who aren't, you'll have to either do lots of searching or do what I did: guess the meaning. It's not terribly difficult, but still annoying to have to think about comprehension like that. Also, the book itself (not the language here) is hard to follow. I would get easily confused of each character's role, and it only started to make sense halfway through the book. That's when I got a feel of the tragedy and the reality of life for William, and his mental toughness (similar to his father). The final few major moments in the book are mainly the death of Thomas by one of his victim's daughters (a girl, forgot her name, ends up killing Toosey because he killed her father. I can't keep up with the names of all the characters in such a fast-paced novel.) I can say that I got to know Toosey and his son, even their beloved Maria (who died in the beginning, setting off the novel). Everything from their styles of mourning to the reactions of meeting up again, I'm glad Toosey and Will got their moment together before being separated for an eternity.
January 20, 2018
In the Australian outback of 1874 twelve year old William Tooley seeks his father after the death of his mother. His father, having received a letter from the boy begging him to look after him, is making his way back to the town in which he left the child while he was still small. Tooley is an outlaw, but he's being pursued by someone to whom he owes a terrible debt, an irishman named Fitheal Fin. Fin isn't alone. With him travels a hooded companion who hides a grotesque secret.
This book is a combination of good literature and good western. It has the cinematic presence of 'the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford' and william faulkner novel. I want more of these characters
This book is a combination of good literature and good western. It has the cinematic presence of 'the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford' and william faulkner novel. I want more of these characters
January 26, 2020
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.
August 8, 2021
This, to me, is an outstanding read. It is well written and perfectly structured to keep the tenseness of the period uppermost. There are twists and turns, but it is the graphic descriptions of the living conditions in northern Tasmania in the 1870s, the lawless protagonists passionately following their survival and retribution paths; it's the fate of children lost and hungry; it's the bloody wilderness and cruelty of the time. This book will remain in my head as the best historical novel I have read, although I admit some bias as the geographical setting is a location I know. Five stars is not enough.
October 6, 2017
Apparently based on a true story, this is the violent story of a father who has a criminal past who will do anything to find his son, who has disappeared in a large Australian city in the 1800s; will they find each other (and the money that has been stolen from them)? Very atmospheric and much like an old-fashioned U.S. western, this was a well-written novel with an intriguing premise (as virtually all Europa Edition books are).
July 24, 2019
Wonderful writing. Wilson’s earlier book, The Roving Party impressed me more than this one. Perhaps I was expecting this book to be more realistic than Wilson meant it to be. The characters and plot seemed a little too far fetched. I found it difficult to imagine Launceston in such chaos. Although I am gender stereotyping here, I wonder if the book might appeal more to males. I look forward to reading another of his books.
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