The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Death Railway

Richard Flanagan's acclaimed novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (2013) has many themes and can be read in different ways. The unforgettable part of the book is its story of a unit of about 1000 Australian soldiers held in a Japanese POW camp in the jungles of Thailand in 1943. The Australians had been doomed to work on the Thai-Burma "Death Railway" which Japan was trying desperately to construct to bolster its sagging fortunes in WW II. Thousands of prisoners had been enslaved to build this railroad without modern equipment and in desperate, disease-ridden conditions. They were treated with heavy cruelty and brutality. In Flanagan's novel, the Australians are led by their second in command, a surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, who strives to keep hope alive and to look after his men. Flanagan's novel puts the reader in the midst of the work on the Death Railway with all its barbarity. In addition to describing work on the road, the novel develops well many individual characters, both of the prisoners and of the Japanese. I hadn't studied the building of this railroad before in any depth, and this novel taught me something new in a compelling, visceral way.

Flanagan's novel is of broader scope that the story of the Death Railway. It tells the story of its major character, Dorrigo Evans, from his childhood to his death in old age many years after the War. Raised in a poor family, Evans was a bookish young man who loved Victorian poetry and the Greek and Roman classics. His intellectual ability was recognized immediately and he became a surgeon. But his life had centered on the search for love and sex. There is always a tendency to underestimate both love and sex and not to understand the many ways in which they can be related. In the years before the War, Evans had become engaged to a young rather ordinary woman, Emma. However, he had a torrid affair with another young woman Ada, the wife of Dorrigo's Uncle who owned a run-down hotel and was a good 20 years Ada's senior. Feeling tormented with the affair, Evans had given Ada his heart when he went off to War.

The novel is recounted in a circular way which blends together scenes at different times with different places. There are, however, some large block sections which focus either on the Death Railway or on the relationship between Dorrigo and Ada. The stories thus become melded together. Dorrigo is haunted by Ada when he at length returns to Australia as a war hero to resume his life. He marries Ella in a relationship which lacks fire and sex. Dorrigo finds sex, at any rate, in many adulterous relationships. It is doubtful whether he comes to understand fully Ella and the children. In addition to the story of Dorrigo, Ella, and Ada, much of the latter part of the book addresses the fates of many of the primary characters in the Death Railway portion of the story, both the Australians and the Japanese.

The novel is of average length (about 330 pages) but is as dense to read as the jungles it describes. The lack of quotation marks to set apart dialogue, a common enough devise, slows the book down. The writing is otherwise dense with long passages of rhythmic repetition. Many paragraphs and aphoristic sentences demand lingering over and rereading. Some of the main events in the book are foreshadowed in the introductory sections and only become developed as the novel moves forward. I found I gained a great deal when I went back and reread the early chapters. Flanagan makes use of every detail that might seem out of place or undeveloped on an initial reading. One of the fine details of the book is its reference to a Vivian Leigh film, "Waterloo Bridge" which the Australians perform in a skit in the early days of their confinement as prisoners. I am not familiar with the film but want to see it. The film comes back in a subtle way in a scene late in the novel.

The book is uneven with some weak sections both in the writing and in the story. I found the story of Dorrigo and Ada went on too long, particularly in the early part of the book, relied too much on coincidence, and distracted from the story of the Death Railway. With its occasional windy section, the book still hangs together cohesively. Portions of the book show the strength of the human spirit in facing adversity with a sense of solidarity and shared fate among the prisoners. Other parts of the book, for example, Dorrigo's personal life are bleaker. Dorrigo paraphrases the over-used phrase "it is what it is" (in Dorrigo's words, "The world is. It just is") at many points in the book. Each reader will need to decide where this book is, philosophically or theologically. I found it thoughtful and deeply ambiguous.

I found this book riveting and couldn't put it down even with its flaws. It offers a portrait of the Death Railway and those who built and those who oversaw it. It is a raw, brutal but also thoughtful and inspiring story.

Robin Friedman