Angela M is taking a break.'s Reviews > The Narrow Road to the Deep North

"A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul ." This is what Dorrigo Evans , the hero of this Booker Prize winning novel thinks and after I finished reading it , I couldn't help but think that this book is certainly the latter . "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 ."
Interspersed throughout the book there are Japanese haiku poems and references to Dorrigo's favorite poem "Ulysses" by Tennyson . These were beautiful additions and a much needed respite from the overwhelming gruesomeness of war that is portrayed here .

The power of this story for me rests in Flanagan's clear and perfect writing both in the explicit details of the horrors of a WWII prison camp and the just beautiful language telling us of Dorrigo's passionate love affair with his uncle's wife . The brutal and oppressive conditions of hunger , malnutrition, disease , beatings and beheadings that these men endured as POWs working as slave laborers on the Thai-Burma Railway make this a difficult read .

There is a blending of past and present rather than a chronological unfolding of events even though most of the book is focused on the war and his time at the Japanese prison camp . It's interesting that it isn't just focused on the prisoners but we see the point of view of the enemy officers who are in charge as well .

The love story - well what can I say about it ? I felt consumed by it as Dorrigo and Amy were. There was passion and the feeling that it was so right that he and Amy belonged together even though she was married . "How to name this ache he felt in his stomach for her , this tightness in his chest, this overwhelming vertigo? And how to say -in any words other than the obvious- that he now was possessed of only one thought which felt more an instinct : that he had to be near her , with her and only her .

Dorrigo is flawed and one can hardly like him at times , but yet there are times when he truly is heroic and a good man. This is an enormously important book shedding light on horrific real events but it is also a story about love , about a man's mistakes , about the just so right things that he does - a book about what it means to be human .