Richard Flanagan - The sound of one hand clapping

The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A very depressing story, a very depressing book.
Wasted life of refugees employed in early 1950-ies at building the dam and electric station at Butlers Gorge in Tasmania.
Author tries to connect hard memories of Slovenian refugees with the harsh climate of Tasmania and here he goes over the top. In the opening chapter one of main characters leaves her home at night, it is cold, windy and snowing, which "...brought back painful memories of forced labour camps in the Urals and Siberia".
Tasmania and Siberian winter - it sent me the warning - there will be lots of exaggeration and demonizing Tasmania.
Another point related to the same paragraph in the book: "... she knew it wasn't Stalin's USSR. Knew it wasn't Kolyma or Goli Otok or Birkenau".
I personally found this sentence very disturbing .
Couple of facts - Goli Otok was a Yugoslav concentration camp on Adriatic. Communist Yugoslavia broke any cooperation with Stalinist USSR in 1948.
Birkenau. Yes, there is relation of Birkenau and Stalin's USSR. This notorious German concentration and extermination camp has been liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
It is only page 4 of the book and I was warned - the author feels free to play tricks with facts and history.
I appreciate R. Flanagan's great writing style, but throughout the book I felt it excessive and false.
Another point is ironic, sarcastic view of Tasmanian hydro-scheme. It is written definitely from the perspective of current day environment protection activists and does not fit atmosphere of years 1954 or 1957 depicted in the book.
And here comes the story - I find it extremely depressing. I know that the author being married to a Slovenian must have good knowledge of migrant fate and stories, but this one was for me impossible to accept. I just paged through large sections of the book to find whether it leads to some feasible end.
Well, on hand there was some relief. Hate and cruelty ends. On the other hand idyllic finale does not fit anything of what was told in the preceding 390 pages.

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