“The Narrow Road to the Deep North” by Richard Flanagan – A Life in Grey

The impact of a moment is never truly retained or remembered once it has passed; everything that occurred will eventually have been forgotten, and one's life won't really be of importance, in the end at least, but to the person living it.

Nothing in this world can endure and stand in the face of the endless test of time, and even the greatest atrocities can be inadvertently pushed back beneath layers of forgetfulness.

However, there are those who remember for as long as they can, who try to make us know and remember our history, what men and women are capable of doing with, for and to themselves.

One such forgotten event in history (but thankfully, not in literature) is the building of the Thai-Burma death railway which took place in 1943, where countless nameless POWs lost their lives and were erased from history.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan begins in that lost and forgotten memory, following the actions of an Australian surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, as he tries to keep the men under his command alive, all while desperately hoping for the hope and motivation to keep on going himself.

Dorrigo's story is a rather long one, and follows him through his experience in the camp, the liberation, the life he tried to establish after the war, his journey into old age, and his introspective recollection of what he has done, what he has thought, and what he has seen of this world, of the countless manifestations of human nature.

The book in itself is an extremely powerful read, with virtually every sentence carrying weight behind it, liable to plunging the reader deep into thoughts dealing with the nature of existence, with the nature of Man. I'll get what in my opinion is the weak point of the book out of the way right now: the slightly tacky romance in the beginning.

Next to the very heavy and thought-provoking themes, the romance seemed a bit tacky and out-of-place, though I will admit that it wasn't just a formula that Flanagan decided to plug in; he developed his own unique idea, which objectively-speaking, wasn't that bad at all.

One of my favorite things about the book is the fact that the horrors and atrocities described within aren't meant to shock the reader into terror, nor are the more inspiring moments cheap attempts at stirring the reader's emotions.

Rather, the book feels like it is written the way life is itself; things just happen, we have ways of perceiving them, in the moment they bring something out of us, and ultimately, they end up being forgotten like the rest, dissipated into the sands of time.

He portrays the worlds of the camp and the one after the war in a realistic way, one where everyone does what he or she can to thrive, endure and justify existence.

All in all, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is probably one of the more emotionally-intense and philosophically-engaging books I have read recently, being solid on every level... the kind of book one would have to read a few times to fully absorb.

I recommend it to anyone yearning to stimulate their grey cells and become lost an a brief episode in history, nearly forgotten forevermore like countless others.

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Richard Flanagan Richard Flanagan is a novelist of Australian origin from Tasmania, considered by The Economist to be one of the finest of his generation. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize, and each of his novels has seen an intriguing amount of success, and some of his better-known works include Death of a River Guide, The Unknown Terrorist, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North.