The Narrow Road to the Deep North: One Heck of a Book!

Let me begin by stating that this novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North simply put it is one heck of a novel. The book is exciting, brutal, romantic, surprising, and beautiful. Yes, I could go on. And all my praise is fully justified as The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Man Booker prize 2014.

The story in the book is about Dorrigo Evans who despite his upbringing in a poor family in Tasmania around first WW1 manages to go to medical school where he graduates as a doctor and later becomes a surgeon. He joins the Australian army when WW2 breaks out and while he is waiting to be shipped abroad, he randomly meets Amy Mulvaney at a library in Adelaide. Dorrigo is however already engaged to Ella, but he is very attracted to Amy and after their brief encounter he can’t forget her.

Later he finds out that Amy is married to his uncle of all people and as he hasn’t seen his uncle for many years, he visits him just to be able to be with Amy. They now begin a steamy love affair before he is sent to war and during this brief time, they become infatuated with each other.

After having been in combat in other countries Dorrigo winds up in a Japanese war camp as a prisoner of war. In the prison camp the Australian soldiers are used as slave laborers to build a railroad in an extremely impassable terrain from Burma to Thailand. The railroad is later to be named The Railroad of Death.

When the war is over Dorrigo is much to his own surprise hailed as a war hero despite the fact that he doesn’t think he did anything special. He returns to Ella as he mistakenly thinks that Amy has died while he was a POW.

Dorrigo lives in a loveless marriage with Ella, and furthermore he can’t seem to find any real purpose with life. To compensate his idle life, he has numerous love affairs with women outside his marriage. He simply tries to forget Amy but to no avail.

Simultaneously with Dorrigo we follow other persons in the book which gives you as a reader a much more nuanced insight in the characters.

The story in the novel frequently jumps in time and place which is quite demanding for the reader, but you are lavishly rewarded for your effort when you finish The Narrow Road to the deep North. Read it by all means.

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