REVIEW
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
by Richard Flanagan
Vintage, Random House, Australia Ptd Ltd, North Sydney, 2013
Though Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker Prize in 2014 for his book The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which is set during WW2, it is hard to get into mainly because of the time shifts from present to various places in the past. Nevertheless, it is soon obvious the book was written by a master craftsman. Richard Flanagan’s use of language is exceptional as in his strong metaphorical descriptions. His sky imagery, for instance, on pp56-7 is brilliant and unforgettable: That bruised sky, blue-welted and blood-puddling….All he could ever see … was that filthy sky racing away from all that horror.
At first readers might not take to Dorrigo Evans, the womanising hero or anti-hero, a highly thought-of young doctor with a productive career ahead of him. Following his life, the book, in jumping from past to present, is a way to help the reader cope with the horror of the war passages. It is easier to read of Dorrigo’s sensuous adventures and infidelities than to read about the tortured lives of Australian prisoners-of-war who were being used as slave labourers to build the Thai-Burma railway line and Dorrigo’s efforts to help them survive.
Dorrigo does not have a high opinion of himself so does not wish to embody the larger-than-life traits of ‘the Big Fella’. In carrying out the role fate forces on him, he becomes a bigger man.
Readers soon identify with him and become so involved in his life they cannot put the book down. They want his love affair with his uncle’s young wife Amy to have a happy ending and for Dorrigo to survive the appalling life he and his fellow prisoners of war are forced to endure. Readers feel uncomfortable eating good food when reading of the miserable ration of soup the starving prisoners-of-war have for breakfast and the two golf-sized rice balls they are given for lunch and are appalled at the seven miles they had to walk each way to work on the railway each day.
The discussion between the Japanese Colonel Kota, a man born or made sadistic by his war experiences, and Major Nakamura, the Camp Commander who thinks he is a good man, is chilling. What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just material to be used to make the railway, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes. If he, a Japanese officer, allowed himself to be captured, he would be executed on his ultimate return to the home islands anyway (p118)
Nakamura comes to see … the Japanese spirit is now itself the railway, and the railway the Japanese spirit, our narrow road to the deep north, helping to take the beauty and wisdom of Basho to the larger world (p131).
Some of the most harrowing descriptions of atrocities are short and abrupt, such as Watch, he said. This is how you cut off heads (p122.). Others such as the death of Darky Gardiner go on for pages and are virtually unbearable for the reader. How much more so are they for the exhausted sick men returning from work and being forced to witness his beating (pp295-311).
Richard Flanagan’s literary genius, ties the whole book together as ‘an elaborate haibun’ – a journey linked by haiku. Fittingly, the name of the book is a translation of the name of one of haiku master Basho’s books. Disturbingly, each time Colonel Kato goes to behead a prisoner, he recites a superb Basho haiku.
The last part of the book looks at what had happened post-war to some of the main characters. Major Nakamura, who manages to escape execution as a war criminal, meets Dr Sato, a Japanese doctor who tells him about inhumane and immoral experiments done on captive American airmen in the name of science. Chillingly, he adds, The Americans are interested in our biological warfare work. We tested these [biological] weapons on the Chinese; they [the Americans] want to use them on the Koreans. I mean, you got hanged if you were unlucky or unimportant. Or Korean. But the Americans want to do business now (p372).
It is easy to see why this remarkable book, which will remain in the minds of readers for a long time, has carried off many awards and why it is so highly recommended.
See Transcript: Richard Flanagan in Conversation with Ramona Koval on https://www.themonthly.com.au/transcript-richard-flanagan-conversation-ramona-koval for more details about Richard Flanagan and his late father, a former prisoner-of-war on the Thai-Burma railway.
A 467 page book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North costs $19.99 in paperback form. However, prices vary, so do check.
Meryl Brown Tobin
Published 'The Write Angle', June, 2017