Grim scenes
3 stars
I have been looking forward to reading The Narrow Road To The Deep North since Dave got it for his Kindle ( which of course means I get to share it via Amazon's Family Library setting). I enjoyed my Audible download of The Unknown Terrorist, also by Richard Flanagan, and expected this story to grip me in a similar way. Instead, I found Narrow Road a much more difficult and impenetrable novel and not simply because of its horrifying Burma Railroad scenes.
We follow the life of an Australian doctor, Dorrigo Evans, who leaves the love of his life, Amy, when he goes off to war. Dorrigo and his men surrender to the Japanese who treat them as less than slaves and Dorrigo must try to keep as many alive as possible in a situation of desperate privation, neglect and overwork. Flanagan's writing is brutally graphic and honest about the …
I have been looking forward to reading The Narrow Road To The Deep North since Dave got it for his Kindle ( which of course means I get to share it via Amazon's Family Library setting). I enjoyed my Audible download of The Unknown Terrorist, also by Richard Flanagan, and expected this story to grip me in a similar way. Instead, I found Narrow Road a much more difficult and impenetrable novel and not simply because of its horrifying Burma Railroad scenes.
We follow the life of an Australian doctor, Dorrigo Evans, who leaves the love of his life, Amy, when he goes off to war. Dorrigo and his men surrender to the Japanese who treat them as less than slaves and Dorrigo must try to keep as many alive as possible in a situation of desperate privation, neglect and overwork. Flanagan's writing is brutally graphic and honest about the suffering of not only the Australian POWs, but also the men and women of many other nationalities who were enslaved by the Japanese army.
Strangely, I was unable to feel the same powerful style throughout the earlier and later parts of the book. Dorrigo is never a particularly likeable person and while his marriage is essentially a sham, on his part at least, I wasn't convinced by his supposedly passionate affair with Amy either. Overly repetitive writing didn't help and perhaps the problem is just too many years being covered. I am glad to have read The Narrow Road To The Deep North and it is an ok book, but not the great novel for which I had hoped.
