The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage International)

This is a book which at times I struggled with - a hard book, but for all the right reasons, as it is confrontational, shakes the reader awake, out of complacency and denial I read this book at times as if grasping at mist. It is `everything' filled both with a sense of the utter, pointless indifference and suffering of existence and the flips, almost on a knife edge, into `peak experience' super reality, deep meaning, which vanishes as we grasp at recognising it. A book which leaves the reader (well this reader) all shook up, spread-eagled and exhausted by the whole complex STUFF of living, wondering at times whether they can bear to continue reading - or bear to stop reading. If you think `what on earth is this reviewer going on about' - well, in part that IS what the book is like, as it follows the story, flipping back and forth over a period of some fifty years, in the life of Dorrigo Evans, a Tasmanian, an Army doctor, caught up in World War 2, captured by the Japanese, and a POW involved in the brutal building of the Burma railway for the glory of Japan The structure of the novel flips over and over between Dorrigo in his 70s, the young Dorrigo, in his 20's, recently enlisted, undergoing training in Australia, then, slightly later, that intolerable, impossible experience as a POW. The `old' Dorrigo of course is at the same time those younger versions, in the way we are always living our present lives backwards, since the place we are always contains the places we have been. He, like all of us, tries to find the story which explains him to himself. This book is certainly not for the faint-hearted, or indeed those with weak stomachs. There are scorching descriptions of atrocities, the terrible effects of starvation and disease, and the implacable brutality our species can visit upon each other - and, indeed upon anything at all. What Flanagan achieves however is to prevent easy demonising - we see, time and again, the weak and the petty achieve moments of humanity - and even those we easily dismiss as monsters are made sense of. Devotion to ideals can damn us all as surely as it can raise and refine us. Even the heroes are more complex, and, in day to day life, sometimes more cruel than we might need them to be. Parallel to the stories of nations and individuals representing those nations and their ideals, the `isms' through which a wider society gets shaped, and shapes us, are the more personal ideals we may live by. Dorrigo Evans carries both these aspects, that of the world stage, and that of the private and personal myth and story. Shortly before being catapulted into the war Evans was involved in a scorching, overwhelming encounter with Amy, his uncle's wife, and one of the themes of the book is the cataclysmic effect of love - or lust, and the confusion between the two - to shape a life, the idea of love as a guiding star, which may be as destructive - or constructive - as devotion to an ideal. It is a stunningly written book, horrific, beautiful and troubling, as hewn out of elemental stuff as Greek Tragedy, reminding me of how raw and transformative literature can be, when it engages with our deep need to make sense of our time here.

I had been recommended this book by several friends so was looking forward to reading it. I'd not heard of the author and was interested to read that his father had survived the Burma Railway - this gives the book huge personal connection which the author must convey to the reader for success. The book is approximately 450 pages, split into several sections, each then divided into small chapters. The format of the book is an old man (77) looking back at his life, the most significant time of which was spent as a Japanese POW working on the Burmese Death Railway. The narrative moves about in time from before he goes to war and up to the present day, as the human mind moves. The reader is treated respectfully by the author in that we are not told each time the period changes, meaning that the reader has to think about the book rather than just reading it. I found the book rewarding to read as I think I got into Dorrigo's mind. There is no question that this is a beautifully written book. The prose are deep but very accessible. This is a confident writer who is passionate about his subject, he is able to describe the beauty in every situation whilst never diminishing the horror. And beauty is created everywhere, from the back of his lover to the trees in the jungle The wonderful language seems to demand that it is read slowly so that even the atmosphere can be absorbed. Many times tableaux are created which can almost be seen and are worth reading over again. Horrific incidents in the camps are described in more detail than I have ever read with the author continually personalising what is happening so you never forget that these objects of torture are still humans. We also explore the rest of Dorrigo's life seeing how he was prepared to deal with his time in the camps and how he dealt with the mental scars during the rest of his life. Most of the book is wonderfully tender and some sections are completely absorbing. My only problem is that I thought that the amazing quality was not kept up all the way through and about 100 pages before the end I found that my attention was wandering more than it should have done, although the ending was as compelling as the majority of the book

A real look into what Australian POWs went through - some parts quite tough to read. Very well written. Would defiantly recommend.

A really enjoyable book although parts of it were quite disturbing especially the descriptions of deprevation and sickness. Also the brutality of the Japanese.

This powerful, sensitive and evocative novel on the human condition, in extremis, which was recommended by a fellow Amazon reviewer (not to mention Man Booker), helped me reconnect with Australian literature after an absence of several decades. I had read a substantial amount of Aussie literature, back when down under beckoned as a viable alternative. Yet my knowledge was stuck in the days when “everyone” was reading Patrick White’s Voss (Penguin Classics) . White would go on to rightly win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. I’ve been to Australia three times, twice on the American government’s “dime.” And so I was amused when Flanagan had his protagonist, Dorrigo Evans attempting to escape from me (and my kind) since “Sydney was full of American GIs from Vietnam on R&R” (p. 364). Tut, tut. I really was not that unruly; my intentions were easily traced, searching for a mindset that, as Flanagan said much earlier in his novel, wouldn’t object to shocking the patrons of the hotel restaurant, which he said far less banally, and much more suggestively: “And wouldn’t that put some cream in their coffee.” War. Richard Flanagan was never in a war, nor was he apparently ever in the military. But his father was. His father was a prisoner of war who worked on the infamous “death railway” between Thailand (Siam) and Burma. And that experience is the core of this novel. He listened to his father well. And what is depicted is war, in extremis. Virtually no American (or Aussie!) had these experiences in Vietnam. And virtually no Allied troops had these experiences fighting Germany during the Second World War. It was a “perfect storm” of “honor,” “racism,” and the massive collision of the tectonic plates of empires. Flanagan brings all of that out so well. Japan, once so quiet, introspective, simply wanting to be left alone, was dragged onto “the world’s stage” in the 19th century, and assumed it role with a vengeance. The “white man” had no place in Asia. Japan would assume the role of providing “guidance” to the natives there. The last third of the novel is “epilogue,” what happened to the survivors of the Death Railroad after the war was over. Vengeance was dressed up in the robes of judicial proceedings. Nakamura, one of the leaders of the camps who managed to escape that vengeance/justice notes the irony: “they only prosecuted us for what we did to them, never what we did to the Chinese.” This is a novel in “high definition.” There are numerous crisp, searing images that will remain with me for the rest of my life. The structure of the novel, with the foreshadowing of events, and the interconnectivities that resulted from a country/continent which had a population that was less than some of today’s megalopolis, was brilliantly done. The title itself is taken from Matsuo Basho’s work of the same name, a link between the experiences of these two very different countries. And Flanagan’s prose is rich, meaningful, and almost perfectly wrought. Dominant is the theme of personal honor – often a good thing – run amok, to use a word now in English, which was derived from the language of Java, where Dorrigo Evans was captured. The Japanese were intent on building a railway because the white man said it could not be done, all for the glory of the emperor, their own version of the ancient pyramids, an analogy Flanagan makes several times. And there is also the disastrous consequences derived from the personal honor of the ever so mundane attempt to retain one’s own bodily functions. I’ll never be able to look at fish “captured” in an aquarium again, without thinking of this novel. As well as a major betrayal of ethics in the medical field: “Because he thought my white lab coat would help him.” And an issue that seems to unite the survivors of all wars: what to tell the families of the ones who didn’t make it, particularly if they died in futile or foolish circumstances: “What did you say? The right thing. Lies.” Flanagan uses the eternal truths of great literature, so it is no surprise that the homecoming of Ulysses is featured as part of a wedding toast. And medical failures haunt: the repeated grasping for a femoral artery that wasn’t there. It is also a novel about the missed opportunities in love. The book’s cover hints at that also, about a woman who had the “…audacity in wearing a big red flower in her hair…” in the bookstore. She became a haunting obsession. So… if you are going to Sydney… wear a crimson camellia in your hair, though a magnolia blossom might do, along with the pearls, and don’t “walk on by” on that iconic bridge, but stand hand-in-hand, and savor the time that is left. 6-stars.

This is the first novel by Richard Flanagan that I have read. I had been put off by knowing that the novel dealt with the prisoners of war working for the Japanese on the Thai-Burma railway line through the jungle. But, having decided to give it a go, I did not regret it. The novel is so much more than a novel about the cruelty and sadness of the treatment of the POWs. It is a wonderful love story. Dorrigo Evans is a wonderful strong and brave but very human character and the way that the author weaves together the stories of the hero from before the war, as a leader in the POW camp and after the war is beautifully done. We see the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers driving the Australian POWs to get the railway built but we are given little insights into their own humanity and frailty as well. The impact of the experience on the POWs, the Japanese solders and Dorrigo Evans himself provides the reader with a deeply emotional sense of the impact of the war on all the parties and there is a wonderful sense of redemption for Dorrigo Evans at the end. Richard Flanagan is a beautiful writer in the English language and this delightfully and sensitively crafted novel is a pleasure to read. I can't recommend it too highly.

One of the best book I have ever read. Painful, harrowing, beautiful story, utterly one of a kind. I hardly can wait to reread it if I will be capable to face it again. It is a profound experience.