Slow paced plot with very introspective dialogue which was difficult to get enthusiastic about. The language was very good and poetic in parts but didn't seem to say very much for long periods of time.

First Person by Richard Flanagan
Set in Tasmania, this book is long and quite intricate, but also very readable. Dealing with how lives are shaped by other people and their influence they have over you..
The central character is an author, Kif Kehlmann, who struggling to support his family takes on a contract to write the biography, in six weeks, of a criminal Ziggy Heidl, who has defrauded banks of millions of pounds. Ziggy is manipulative, and evasive about why and how he did it, he won't help with any real facts of his life,. making the writing of the book almost impossible. But I think the real story is the insidious way this man gets under the skin of those he meets, and how Ziggu's personality affects Kif’s life.
Ziggy is a menacing character, and seems unwilling to give Kif any help or details, leaveing Kif unable to complete his task and collect his much needed fee. Kif feels increasingly frustrated, and ends up making up most of the book, he is uncertain if he can finish the book at all., and feels sullied by association with Ziggy.
Ultimately, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for any of the characters, and although extremely well written and full of ideas, I somehow found it uninvolving. Not really my cup of tea, but I think a good read for those who enjoy books of a more exploratory nature, and is really is very good prose.

Found this book really hard to read and struggled to get into it. Sadly could not finish it as I did not have the patience to persevere. Found it very odd that the author referred to the characters by their full name too.

First Person is a slow and lengthy literary thriller set in Australia in the early 1990s and written from the view point of Kif, an aspiring novelist who is asked to ghostwrite the memoir of Heidl an infamous conman. One brief and violent episode lifts the pace of the novel but I was unable to become invested or interested in the two main characters due to the over wording and overthinking of the novelist.

Dark writer's block and complicity with a dangerous man. The ghostwriter who is struggling for money and then for his subject to deliver a story. Very clever but not very enjoyable.

I can't really put it into words, but this just wasn't my story. I didn't 'feel' it. The writing was beautiful, but sometimes someone just doesn't click with a novel and this was an example for me.

I loved the premise of this book and, occasionally, I couldn't put it down. However, I mainly struggled to get through it as I found the story slow and the passages overly descriptive.

First Person is a mixture of literary crime fiction and psychological thriller.The two main characters will really stay with you as they engage in their fandango of fact-finding and fact-avoiding. In today’s climate, it is impossible not to think of people in power who resemble Heidl with his self-serving version of the truth and his hastiness to dub things ‘fake news’. But Kif does not escape the writer’s sardonic wit either. He is a mediocre writer indeed and we can laugh at his unsuccessful attempts to copy Chandler’s style.

To my complete surprise, I discovered that the novel is based on a true story. Flanagan was indeed commissioned in his youth to write the autobiography of Australia’s greatest con man, John Friedrich. He committed suicide just a few days before he was due to appear in court and before Flanagan had the chance to finish the book. Many of the most surprising details in the book, such as tricking investors with empty containers, are absolutely true. Yet there are plenty of playful deviations from the truth, plenty of speculation and sly asides, which make us wonder just where the line between fact and fiction, truth and interpretation, good and evil can be drawn. This is a surprising, inventive page-turner of a novel.

I really struggled to enjoy this book, I felt it was very slow going and I didn’t really understand where the story was going.

The main character Kif was a difficult one to get onboard with and I found him more and more frustrating towards the end of the book. Overall it took me an age to finish this book and I wanted to quit a few times but I did finish it without any sense of satisfaction. It just wasn’t for me.

I was uncertain what this book was. A satire on the publishing industry? A meditation on truth and narration, unreliable and otherwise? It is partly based on Flanagan’s own experience of ghost writing a notorious conman’s memoir, yet this “true” story felt the least compelling of the ones within the novel. I was more intrigued by Kif Kehlmann‘s old friend Ray and their background in Tasmania. Kif is a struggling writer and I was willing him to succeed, despite his unlikeable nature. This is a difficult book to get to grips with, yet it pulled me through to its somewhat depressing conclusion.

Supping, or ghost writing, with the devil …..

I love Richard Flanagan’s writing, and the compassion which is evident in the writer, from his ability to see the redeemable in the flawed, and the flaws in the heroic. Flanagan’s characters never fit easily into a perceived stereotype, even when we think they might. This writer is one at home in nuance

Although I will admit that the extraordinary height and depth of Narrow Road to the Deep North is not reached in First Person – and, in some ways, such a very lacerating exploration into what it might be to inhabit the best and worst aspects of humanity – might not be a journey which could be made again by a writer. In a way, I suspect it might be necessary to swim in shallower (though perfectly interesting) waters for a while.

Not that First Person is in any way, superficial, but it is certainly games-y, the writer writing about writing, being savage and mocking and funny about the whole ‘business’ of writing, publishing and its commodity status. And Flanagan plays with the reader too, making us wonder just what is autobiographical here, how much is Flanagan his central character Kif Kehlmann? It is the early 90’s Kif is an aspiring literary fiction writer in his twenties from Tasmania, who, having difficulties getting published, and with an impending family to feed, accepts with misgivings something which feels like a betrayal of his Art – to ghost-write the memoirs of a criminal. Siegfried, ‘Ziggy’ Heidl is a high end corporate fraudster, and his memoirs, in these days of success often belonging to the tawdriest and loudest figures, will be gold-dust.

Flanagan, as he has made clear, is to a certain extent, mining his own past. In the early 90s, Flanagan, a Tasmanian, an aspiring writer in his 20’s, finding it difficult to get published, ghost wrote the memoirs of a corporate fraudster, John Friedrich. And some further parallels to Friedrich are mirrored in some of Heidl’s story, as I discovered, doing a bit of research after I had finished this book

Ziggy is a complex, dangerous, controlling man and Kif is very quickly out of his depth. Ziggy is a somewhat charismatic figure, in a frightening way. He has hidden depths of thought and perception in some ways, whilst have completely unhidden, bombastic, narcissistic, mendacious shallows in many others.

Caught between the devil of the publisher and his advance, the need for the ghost written book to be published yesterday, whilst the story, Heidl, and potential sales are hot, the deep blue sea is Ziggy himself . Struggling to do proper journalistic investigation to flesh out a rather evading, evasive story and the turgid detail of Ziggy’s memoirs which Kif is being hired to polish, Kif is progressively getting drawn into something quite dark. If you like, biographical detection work is going on, and cans of disgustingly wriggling worms will pour forth.

And, for Kif, he is going to be irretrievable changed by this encounter, with this having knock on effects in his personal, family life, and with a significant childhood friend who has been the means of getting Kif involved in the Heidl project in the first place. Past, present and future will all get cracked.

The structure of the book is not linear (it often isn’t these days!)

An older Kif, now working in reality TV (another kind of manufactured lie) looks back on the young Kif, making a Faustian pact, accepting the business deal to ghost write these memoirs, rather than ‘literature’. Difficult to tell whether Mephistopheles, in Kif’s case, is evasive trickster Ziggy, or the publishing house hiring him on the cheap to ghost write. A publishing house whose supremo :

“was frightened of literature. And not without good reason. For one thing, it doesn’t sell. For another, it can fairly be said that it asks questions that it can’t answer. It astonishes people with themselves, which, on balance, is rarely a good thing. It reminds them that the business of life is failure, and that the failure to know this is true ignorance”

The book does contain challenges for itself – Kif is possibly not a very good writer (though Flanagan is!) So, writing not very good writing (there are excerpts where Kif is trying to hone his manuscript) is inevitably a bit of a tightrope.

This is a book which has certainly divided readers – both professional reviewers and us happy readers and reviewers for pleasure.

It is certainly one I’m recommending, but do find myself in a slightly curious position of being not sure, amongst my bookie friends, of knowing who will love it and who will be utterly bemused by my recommendation of it

Look inside, browse, take a punt.

It is a very different book indeed from ‘Narrow Road’ and that in part is my appreciation of it – Flanagan doesn’t rest on his own laurels, but is a writer who explores other paths – he is not a ‘play-it-safe’ writer, even with his own strengths and success

Now, I am never sure how useful it is to know anything about an author's own nature, but I must reveal that what first drew me to read Flanagan at all (Narrow Road) was hearing an interview with him on Radio 4. What i picked up was : here was someone who was not sucked into media hype - or even into any media hype about himself, with having been nominated, and then winning, the Booker with that book. This was not a man who answered glibly, rather, revealingly, thoughtfully, spaciously. I liked his stillness, presence, and felt that he listened to the interviewer, listened to how he understood the question, and tried to answer from an honest place. That was what drew me to read Narrow Road, as much as it's nomination and subject matter. And I found what I detected in the man, in the writing.

Late last year, having just read, and still in the process of digesting, First Person, I accepted an invite from BBC World Service Book Club, to attend a broadcast interview with Flanagan, where his book would be discussed with him, and questions taken from around the world. And I was even more impressed by what I experienced as an authenticity in this writer. And his ability to be talking about wider, deeper matters than what he is directly talking about. I was scribbling frantically, interesting things said, which have given further reflection - quotes below are not from the book, but from that interview and Q + A. I felt I had been present at something quite unusual. It was the first such World Service Book Club event I'd attended, but, talking afterwards to some people who regularly attend, that feeling I had was verified by others

"It is the job of the novelist to describe. It is the job of the reader to judge"

"It is the job of the novelist to journey into the soul"

"Memory is an act of listening and creation"

He said that he was against the idea that literature can ennoble or save us, but that it (literature) is OF life - chaotic, mysterious, and not separate from life

He referenced Nietzsche, who said hope was the cruellest emotion, to which Flanagan's response was "without hope we are nothing....the highest expression of hope is love"

"(A) work of art - their great strength is close to their great weakness"

"If we take our compass from power, we will find only despair - if we take our compass from those around us we will find hope"

Of course, these were all reflections arising out of discussion and Q + A about Narrow Road, but I took away a lot of sustaining stuff to mentally and emotionally chew on

There was one point where I disagreed profoundly, but did not leap in to interject something I wanted to continue to mull over - that idea that literature cannot ennoble or save us - personally, I think that it is BECAUSE good literature is prepared to be chaotic, mysterious - like life itself is, and therefore, sometimes deeply uncomfortable - that it can take us to places where we refuse to go, and make us inhabit chaos and mystery, that is, inhabit life itself, the life of others, the life of other, in ways we sometimes do not want to. It is in our living that we sometimes try to separate from what life is - reducing to the easy soundbite, the pat response. Literature, art itself says, "Listen, Look, and makes us WAKE UP!" And waking up, surely is what may save us?

I received this as a digital review copy from the publishers, via NetGalley

Sounded like it was going to be an interesting read and so I asked if I might have an Advanced Reader Copy and was pleased to have my request granted. My mistake was that I didn't pay enough notice to the author!

I think that I am almost alone in having given an almost zero rating to his earlier book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and am about to do the same to First Person. The style annoys me and so the whole reading experience is no pleasure and I gave up. There are so many books that are worth reading that, after many decades, I have just about taught myself to move on if a particular book does not "gel". Sorry Mr F but you are now permanently off my "to read" list.

Kif Kehlmann is an aspiring writer in need of money, so he agrees to write the memoir of con man Siegfried Heidl. As Heidl becomes more and more uncooperative, Kehlmann finds himself drawn deeper into his web of lies.

A fictionalised account of Flanagan’s experience ghost-writing John Friedrich’s memoir, First Person asks us, to question the lines between fact and fiction, to rethink what memoir does or doesn’t mean and view the publishing industry with more than a little side-eye.

There is no doubt, it’s well written. I just didn’t click with the story the way I thought I would based on the blurb.

A interesting look at when instead of pouring oneself into work when the work is pouring itself into and shaping the author. A fantastic piece of literary fiction and nothing less than what we would expect from Flanagan.

Kif is desperate to be a writer. Taking odd jobs and shift work, he spends every last minute scribbling or tapping away at an old computer in the tiny spare room regardless of his baby daughter and pregnant wife. Unsurprisingly, the lack of money begins to press heavily upon them.

Then Kif’s old childhood friend, Ray, gets him a job ghostwriting the autobiography of Ziggy Heidl the notorious Australian fraudster. The chance to be spoken of as a writer, but mainly the offer of a large sum of money, takes Kif from Tazmania to Melbourne into the frustrating world of Heidl whose stories play upon the sympathies of the listener, encouraging them to create their own version of Heidl’s past, one which hangs upon a few cleverly chosen but mundane words that fail to withstand any historical scrutiny.

Despite having screwed the banks for millions, Heidl appears to have a boring life. He comes alive only in his ability to manipulate anyone he comes into contact with, enmeshing Kif and others in the sticky web of his endless fabrication.

First Person is a clever novel. The fad for authenticity, the personal story, the authentic singular unique perspective and voice, memoir, the first person account, is explored and exploded. Fiction somehow always wins out, revealing truth to be a slippery thing that seeps out of the constraints of narrative whilst simultaneously being unable to be explored without it. What really did happen that day in the woods with Heidl? Even Kif seems unsure… Who do we credit with the primacy of our first person? Are we really in control of our own story, or are the lives and stories of others constant impingements upon the development of our own?

First Person was both fun to read and mildly depressing. There is one scene where Kif meets a famous author, Emily Coppin. This is years after his attempts to ghostwrite Heidl’s autobiography. He has become famous as a television writer and producer. Emily says the novel, ‘as a mode of narrative it’s dead’. Their conversation continues:

Everyone wants to be the first person. Autobiography is all we have. I mean, isn’t that what you do in reality TV?

I don’t know what I do, I said. I just go in each morning and make it up.

That’s where we’re different then, Emily said. I don’t make it up. I hate stories. We all hate them. We’ve heard them all before. We need to see ourselves.

It sounds like literary selfies to me, I said.

What’s wrong with a good selfie? Emily said.

And of course, Kif is, ostensibly at least, writing an autobiography, isn’t he? This self-reflective, postmodern, tongue-in-cheek, self-mockery is amusing and mostly provocative rather than too arch. What do the literary trends say about our time? Is it all about getting likes? What kind of book should one try to write and at what cost?

Oh Dear! I tried but only got 1 percent through and gave up. I couldn't follow the story and was not interested enough but the opening to bother to try.

Flanagan writes literature and this book is just that. And as he writes via his main character, literary stories have no ending. The work is convoluted and at times it irritated me. I felt like giving up reading it but as jt was Flanagan, I persisted.
Ultimately, it failed to capture neither my mind nor my imagination despite some skilful writing in parts. It felt mechanical in construction and the plotline, perhaps satirical, seemed trite.
I hold his earlier novels in my mind as exemplars of storytelling.

I did not enjoy this, I'm afraid. Not for me, never mind, I will move on

Following the previous award-winning book was always going to be hard for Flanagan. In this novel one can see the development of the writing style, introspective yet skimming over certain details - a narrator as an unreliable witness almost. The premise was interesting, a struggling writer given an opportunity to write a memoir for a notorious criminal but getting lost in the story and getting corrupted by his subject. Unfortunately Flanagan's prose style meant that it felt as though an interesting story ground to a halt at times with passages of superfluous detail that blocked the pace.

<blockquote>What do you mean lies? Heidl said. His tone had altered. Being with Heidl was like eating an ice cream that turned into underarm deodorant that turned into an echidna. [loc. 2505]</blockquote>

Kif Kehlmann, a penniless young writer, is approached by notorious corporate fraudster Siegfried Heidl, who proposes a deal: $10,000 to ghost-write Heidl's biography, in six weeks. Kif, whose wife is pregnant and whose bank account is nearly drained, would like to be able to afford to refuse. He wants to write a great Australian literary novel, not a conman's life story. But he has to make some money somehow, soon, and Heidl has already produced an outline. How hard can it be?

Very hard indeed. The 'interviews' Kif has with Heidl turn into rambling, structureless reminiscence and philosophising, and Kif finds it impossible to extract any usable content from them. Worse, his failure to produce a draft for the publisher is draining his confidence. It's been his ambition since childhood to be an author, but all he has is a heap of disconnected notes, evidence that he can't write a book. Worst of all, Heidl's cheerily nihilistic utterances ("You should give up writing, he said. Have some fun while you can. Before you’re sacrificed.") are having an insidious effect on Kif's own psyche.

And who is Heidl, anyway? It becomes apparent that 'Siegfried Heidl' is the latest in a series of identities, the persona of a master manipulator. Heidl doesn't really change over the course of the novel, although we learn more about his unsavoury past. Perhaps at heart there's nothing there, no first person: a hollow man without the principles, creativity or individuality that Kif values in himself. Kif <u>does</u> change, or rather <u>is</u> changed. Heidl hollows him out.

There is some glorious prose here, and some very funny scenes (some of which are also very dark). I didn't engage with it, though: Heidl is slippery and evasive and seems to have no actual personality, and Kif is self-pitying, ineffectual and all too easily warped by Heidl's company.

According to Flanagan, this novel draws heavily on his own experience of ghost-writing the biography of John Friedrich, a notorious Australian conman who apparently committed suicide rather than face trial. I'm not sure if that means that Kif's reflections on the Australian publishing world ("Though I had nothing to say, I had read enough Australian literature to know this wasn’t necessarily an impediment to authorship") mirror Flanagan's own early experiences. And I hope the denouement of the novel is not written from life.

Read for review, via NetGalley: I have to say that the ARC I received was so poorly formatted (no capital Gs or Ds, random line breaks, etc) that reading it was hard work.