The Narrow Road to the Deep North

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 . 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.

I enjoyed and very much recommend this book, but more for the tale than the telling. It follows a rather unlikeable, unprincipled Tassie doctor whose one redeeming act in life--and it's a big one--is to buoy up and try to protect the hundreds of Aussie POWs under his command as the Japanese force them to build the Siam-Burma railway more or less by hand. It's a tale of harrowing suffering and duty, of racism on a few sides, of the Japanese blind devotion to the emperor weighed against the English/Aussie love of individual freedom, and of the choices one makes to marriage and family contrasted with the hopeless addiction of romantic love.When he left for the war, the doctor left behind an upper-crust fiancée in Melbourne who's socially perfect but bores him and a hardscrabble barmaid in Adelaide whom he loves but who's married to his older, pedestrian uncle. The doctor's fidelity to his fellow prisoners during the war stands in sharp contrast to his utter infidelity to his wife and children after the war.The book is plainly written, as you might expect a Tasmanian author to write--meaning it's direct and unadorned. There are citations throughout from classical, romantic, and haiku poetry, but the text itself is rarely lyrical (not that it has to be). It just tells a tale, with shifts back and forth in time that reminded me of that high school favorite Slaughterhouse Five. After the war, as the doctor's fame and professional success grow, he slips easily into the past, back to the prison camp, even as the passage of time and as pre-senility make it harder to remember his long-gone mates' names and faces. His mates who also survived the war have their own troubles readjusting to civilian life, in an era when PTSD was not understood and even shameful.The author, without ever forgiving the Japanese soldiers who ran the camp and oversaw the railway, tries to get at the cultural factors that led to the war and to the cruelty of the soldiers toward the people whose lands they occupied and to their prisoners. He touches on the firebombing and atomic bombing of mainland Japan, the post-war tribunals and executions (pointing out the class disparities in who was hanged or who wasn't), and the ex-Imperial soldiers' efforts to reinvent themselves in a radically different post-war Japan.In the end, the book is about the doctor's often heartless, often misguided efforts to do the right thing, to find love, meaning, and solace, to fix past wrongs, and to muddle forward in the face of frightening adversity--what he calls charging the windmill.

Bien mais les lettres sont trop petites

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

This is an ambitious and interesting novel, with a non-linear structure and some moments of incredible depth. It is also one of the most inconsistent novels I have ever read.The story is plagued by a romantic sub-plot which feels rather conventional, if not cliché. I was almost putting the book down while reading its super-cheesy second part. I simply could not believe that that part was written by the same person who had written the captivating first part of the novel. The love story is forced, inauthentic. I felt as if some editor imposed such a sub-plot to the poor writer, in order to put some romance into an otherwise bleak tale of war, tortures, survival and regrets. I had this feeling because, on developing the absurd romance between the protagonist and a strange girl met in a bookshop (and similar clichés), Flanagan's pen simply does not look inspired as in other parts of the book.And, in fact, the novel manages to redeems itself in its third and fourth part, which are the most choral. In those parts, we are introduced to a little crowd of prisoners of war. We witness how they are tortured and pushed to their physical and psychological limits; we also follow the destinies of the survivors in the aftermath of the war. The stories are human, all too human! It is nearly impossible not to get teary-eyed in some passages. Another interesting aspect of the novel is the investigation into the psychology of the "others": we don't know only the tortured prisoners, we also get some revelations about the torturers, their mentality, their stories, their world-view. The very last pages, once again, fall into a rather contrived rhetorical cheesiness.This was my first Flanagan's novel. I am not sure whether I caught the writer's voice. I am not even sure whether this writer has his own voice. He definitely knows how to write, and (sometimes) he does it very well. However, his writing does not feel unique or recognisable. A writer with a unique voice makes you feel like you want to read all his works. I am not sure whether I will read another novel by Flanagan anytime soon.Despite its stylistic inconsistencies, I am happy I have read 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North'. Some of its parts are really illuminating, deep and moving. I wish the writer would not have gone for some easy, used and abused literary tropics. This story could have been stronger, deeper and more powerful, if only Flanagan had decided to be a bit braver.

This book solved for me what was something that has plagued me for years. My father was in New Guinea and although he didn't talk much about the war he often remarked about how the Japanese people had redeemed themselves after so much cruelty to other humans and why the hell they bombed Pearl Harbour etc etc. There seemed to be an unanswered conundrum.The answer should have been obvious but I think still remains with a lot of people when they see the well ordered country and polite and friendly people of Japan today. Of course, it was the same old problem that remains in so many places today, the blind devotion to leaders that promise so much and deliver so little. In this case it was the blind faith the Japanese people had in the belief that their Emperor was a God, and this led to them believing and doing everything they were told, including that Japan would rule the world. I can imagine how this could change a person's mindset, they actually believed they were invincible. As Paul Keating said "If there is one thing we have learned about History it's that we have learned nothing about History".

次のような特徴の文体だが、難解になる随分と手前で止めてあり、比較的容易にストーリーは追える:①三人称による記述。視点人物が見たもの聞いたものを記述する場合、視点人物の心理まで踏み込んで記述する場合、視点人物を置かず俯瞰的に記述する場合の三つをかなり自由に使い分ける。②時間と空間は予告なく移動する。（プルーストみたいな小説ではないのでご安心を）③直喩、暗喩、象徴をバランスよく入れてくる。各シーンが脳内にこびりつくような文体。（プルースト....ご安心を）感想: 各章の冒頭に日本の俳句の英語訳が載っている。最初は芭蕉の「牡丹蘂(しべ) ふかく分け出る 蜂の名残哉」A bee staggers out of peony という句。英語で書かれた小説なのだから、この句の由来は無視して解釈するべき。そうすると、なんだかとても哀しげでかつエロティックな俳句に見える。わざわざ冒頭に置いてあるのだから、基本は男女の性愛に関わる喜び、悲哀、喪失感、業の深さをメインテーマと捉えて読むべきかなあと思っている。 そう考えると、戦争にまつわる描写が鮮明すぎで長過ぎやしないかなと思う。読者を「戦争の悲惨さ」「戦争がいかに人を狂わせるか」みたいなテーマだけにミスリードしてしまうのではないか。特に、主人公以外についての戦後の後日談的なものが多すぎるように感じた。勿論、それがないと、多様性とか重厚さに欠けるものになるのは分かるのだが。ただただバランスが悪い。 戦中の日本人、それから「後日談」の舞台としての日本には、どうしても「ハリウッド映画に出て来る日本」的な居心地の悪さを感じた。人物の言動、見えてくる景色、何より光の当て方が違うんだよなあ...。別に日本人がこんな酷いことをした筈がない、とか言うつもりではなく、とにかく、なんか（かなり）違うんだよなあ、ということ。 短所はあるが、正直言って最後まで貪り読んでしまった。最初に記した三つの特徴を最大限に活かした読み応えのある小説だった。