I sort of hesitated before starting this because Flanagan also wrote Gould's Book of Fish, which I put down a couple of months ago and still haven't picked up again.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about Sonja, whose mother disappeared when she was three, and whose father, Bojan, drank too much. It starts in 1954, after Bojan and Maria immigrate to Tasmania after WWII, and moves between years until 1990, putting together the pieces of their lives, the memories coming when they will - it's sort of all over the place. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about life and death, family, history and growth. It's about redemption and forgiveness, and love. 

Flanagan likes to use very poetic language, which I sometimes find it to be a bit tedious and occasionally got in the way of the characters. But Flanagan has the ability to make scenes come to life, and The Sound of One Hand Clapping has moments of brilliance. The scene where a burnt photograph appears to come to life is so well written that that is the lasting image I have of the book, even though that event has little to do with the main characters. 

I'm not really sure what I felt about this novel, actually. I liked the language, but Sonja's life is not a pleasant one, so saying I liked it doesn't sound right. It was the same for the characters. Saying I liked them is wrong (Bojan especially was hard to come to grips with), but I understood them. I felt for them though, and I think, here, that that's the point.