Wanting

In Van Diemen's Land the governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife Lady Jane take in Mathinna, a young Aboriginal girl, to prove that reason and Christianity can take the place of what they call savagery. Some twenty-five years later Franklin has vanished in the Arctic searching for the Northwest Passage, and reports that his men turned to cannibalism horrify England. Lady Jane asks Charles Dickens for help. He writes a play about the lost expedition, takes the lead role himself and sees in it a mirror of the coldness inside himself, just as he is close to leaving his wife. Moving between the two stories, the novel asks how desire, and the effort to master it, shapes lives.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, United Kingdom, 19th century

First published

2008

Author's age

47 when first published

ISBN

9781741666557 (Knopf, Australia)

9780802119001 (Atlantic Monthly Press, United States)

9781848870710 (Atlantic Books, United Kingdom)

9781848870772 (Atlantic Books, United Kingdom)

9780802144775 (Grove Press, United States)

9781784702922 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata