Men who do not speak of war.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Men who do not speak of war.
: Ways of avoiding immense pain, suffering and loss.
I had been planning to read Richard Flanagan’s new book as having read some of his others I know he is capable of writing a great story. Also my book clubbers had spoken of it and hearing him on the radio, hence it is one of our books to read. I made the purchase and settled into a funk of humid heat in the lead up to New Year’s Eve 2013 and the countdown to the New Year of 2014. I find this time of year depressing, multiplied several times due to the oppressive, stultifying horrible heat. With just a ceiling fan for respite. Imagine being marooned in the Burmese jungle in humidity ten times worse than this. In conditions that are still hard to discuss.
The legacy of this railway is still too raw well over a half of a century on.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a mesmerising account of a war story, a love story and how each person tries to write their own destiny.
In Dorrigo’s(the war hero) he is forever chasing the ideal of true love. Forever shattered by the perceived failure of his inability to save men from a tragic death on the Burma railway, also aptly known as the death railway.
Questions are left hanging, would he have stayed with his lover, even if he could?
Why didn’t he, in fact make that choice to not seek her out after the war? A revelation that comes near the end of the tale exposes this.
The author throws up resolutions that are always out of reach.
A litany of conflicted individuals.
Dorrigo was the leader and doctor of men at the POW camp. He becomes haunted by the senseless beating of one the men and the many witnesses of it. A pain that never lets go.
There are many reoccurring accounts of Darky Gardiner and his fate, his place among the other POW’s, and like so many others a life lost.
The violence is shattering to read, it wells up and over the pages. Sometimes it is too difficult to read. Flanagan tries to make sense of humanity and its capacity for violence.
‘The greatest crimes – and after, no one will really ever remember it. Like the greatest crimes, it will be as if it never happened. The suffering, the deaths, the sorrow, the abject, pathetic pointlessness of such immense suffering by so many; maybe it all exists only within these pages and the pages of a few other books. Horror can be contained within a book, given form and meaning But in life horror has no more form than it does meaning horror just is. And while it reigns, it is as if nothing in the universe that it is not’.(p 23 & 24).
Also toying with what is left behind, the nature of history and remembrances. ‘The nature of man and of life – nothing endures’. (p. 254). He seems to spell out an overwhelming futility in life.
In another lament of futility he reflects again on a fragility and disposability of life ‘Life goes on, nothing remains’. p 271. ‘Darky Gardiner’s eyes were darting everywhere, and everywhere all he could see was a world to which he was meaningless, nothing, that had no need of him’.
The life on The Line as a POW is delivered to the reader in all its weariness, senselessness and horror. The horrific amputation operation (p. 290 – 291) on Jack Rainbow being a case in point.
All human history a history of violence intones Flanagan, while leading into an account of the beating of Darky. (p 307) An account so horrible I couldn’t read it all the way through.
‘For an instant he thought he grasped the truth of a terrifying world in which one could not escape the horror, in which violence was eternal, the great and only verity, greater than civilisations it created, greater than any god man worshipped, for it was the only true god. It was as if man existed only to transmit violence to ensure its domain is eternal. For the world did not change, this violence had always existed and would never be eradicated, men would die under the boot and fists and horror of other men until the end of time, and all human history was a history of violence’.
Flanagan also traverses the story through the eyes of the captors. Trying to achieve a sense of balance. He writes of the life after war of the Korean and Japanese. Nakamura, the Japanese captor, somehow rewriting history, reinventing himself as a ‘good’ man. (p. 409)
Dorrigo attempts to place things into context by stating ‘The world is, he would think. It just is’. (p. 420) an explanation of meaning that has none.
There is some tussle with how to remember the past. To rewrite the past? As in the account of Jimmy Bigelow in his 90’s (p. 451) ‘His mind slowly distilled his memory of the POW camps into something beautiful. ‘
The most poignant story is of a bugle.(p 452). A bugle sold @ a garage sale for $5. I cried for memories lost, for the history of those men on the death railway, for the lament of the last post. For an old man who dies without telling his legacy, why?
The other symbolism that flows in this story is of a crimson flower and a pearl necklace. The reader hangs on to these as Dorrigo does himself. They float in and out of view.
The lasting legacy of this brutality on all sides is of men who do not speak. There is an accepted denial of all the horror and senseless loss. The cost still being felt in the descendants.


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