“The Narrow Road to the Deep North” by Richard Flanagan (Australia)

Book Club Favourite of Season 19

Review

Readers loved the book, describing it as beautifully written with clean and polished prose. They found it easy to get inside the heads of the different characters, and enjoyed the changing voices and different perspectives from chapter to chapter. They loved the vivid descriptions that brought the scenes alive, especially the protagonist’s first encounter with Amy in the bookshop. Readers warmed to Evans who they described as a flawed man struggling to do his best in horrendous conditions. They found his observations realistic and felt they gave rich insights into human nature. They liked the symbolism of the Japanese haiku that separated the five parts of the book and they felt that the underlying theme of death was alleviated with this poetry. Although there were many heart-breaking scenes, readers thought that the author had successfully avoided making them mawkish. One reader said she had already recommended the book to two of her friends and everyone agreed that it was definitely worth rereading. Overall, it averaged a 9.5 out of 10.

Synopsis

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife Amy two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.

Hailed as a masterpiece, Richard Flanagan’s novel tells the unforgettable story of one man’s reckoning with the truth.

Favourite Extract

His book that night was presented to him by a delegation of Japanese women, come to apologise for Japanese war crimes. They came with ceremony and video cameras, they brought presents, and one gift was curious: a book of translations of Japanese death poems, the result of a tradition that sees Japanese poets compose a final poem. He had placed it on the darkwood bedside table next to his pillow, aligning it carefully with his head. He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.

Nicola’s Book Club reading list

Season 19 (Oct 2015 – Jun 2016)
“The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia-Hercegovina)
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison (U.S.)
“In the Country of Men” by Hisham Matar (Libya)
“The Ventriloquist’s Tale” by Pauline Melville (Guyana)
“The Narrow Road to the Deep North” by Richard Flanagan (Australia) *

* The book club favourite
In italics, Nicola’s Coup de Cœur