the Kirkreview
  • Home
  • Blog
  • reviews
    • evolution >
      • The Poetic Species
      • The Reef
      • The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet
      • The Compatibility Gene
      • Last Ape Standing
      • Secret Chambers: The Inside Story of Cells & Complex Life
      • Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
      • What a Plant Knows
      • Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
      • Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird
      • The Social Conquest of Earth
      • Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
      • Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are
      • My Beautiful Genome
      • Mindfield
      • The Mysteries of Metamorphosis
      • The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
      • The Problems of Evolution
      • The Problems of Biology
      • The Double Helix
    • physics, cosmology and astronomy >
      • The Universe
      • Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn
      • Gravity's Engines
      • Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution
      • Ordinary Geniuses: Max Delbruck, George Gamow, and the Origins of Genomics and Big Bang Cosmology
      • Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle
      • 4% universe
      • The Elegant Universe
    • planet science >
      • Earthmasters
      • The Goldilocks Planet
      • The Universe Within
      • Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
    • brain science >
      • The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them
      • Waking Up
    • ancient history >
      • ghosts of cannae
      • scipio africanus
      • universe of stone
    • OUP Very Short Introducions >
      • Networks
      • Nelson Mandela
      • Fossils
      • The Animal Kingdom
      • Cancer
      • Magnetism
    • Scandinavian Noir
    • Essays >
      • Ausralian Quarterly Essays >
        • Quarterly Essay 59: Faction Man: Bill Shorten's path to power by David Marr
        • Quarterly Essay 58: Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State by David Kilcullen
        • Quarterly Essay 57: Dear Life: On Caring for the Elderly by Karen Hitchcock
        • Quarterly Essay 56: Clivosaurus: The Politics of Clive Palmer
        • Quarterly Essay 55: A Rightful Place: Race, recognition and a more complete Commonwealth
        • Quarterly Essay 54: Dragon's Tail: The Lucky Country after the China Boom
        • Quarterly Essay 53: That Sinking Feeling: Asylum seekers and the search for the Indonesian solution
        • Quarterly Essay 52 Found in Translation: In Praise of a Plural World
        • Quarterly Essay 51 The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George Pell
        • Quarterly Essay 50 Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny
        • Quarterly Essay 49 Not Dead Yet
        • Quarterly Essay 48 After the Future: Australia's New Extinction Crisis
        • Quarterly Essay 47: Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott
        • Quarterly Essay 46 Great Expectations: Government, Entitlement and an Angry Nation
        • Quarterly Essay 37 What's Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia
  • creative
    • poetry
    • stories
    • essays
  • where next?
    • trajectories
  • contact Kirkreview
    • editing
  • climate

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

22/10/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
 
This is a novel of many parts, cemented together by the author’s love for the written word. Flanagan once describes this love from the point of view of an illiterate Tasmanian trapper who saw stories to be a fantastic journey or, as AC Grayling said of Flanagan’s novel when awarding the 2014 Man Booker, to be like riding a comet. The quotidian dusty colour of interbellum Australia, the inhumanity of the Thai Burma railway that reacted to produce such humanity, the dystopia of post-war Japan, the folly and perfection of love, these are all elements that fuse in Flanagan’s tribute to the written word.

While always a rich and colourful novel, Flanagan employs lean prose, with a paucity of adjectives, to incise more deeply into the meaning of an event. He does not judge, he simply observes, to sink into a portrayal of events which becomes breathtaking, then alarming. By not pigeon-holing personal histories into the values of any one generation or any one culture, he has created a classic. As Flanagan’s protagonist, Dorrigo Evans, confronts horrors beyond logic or belief, he grapples with the ephemeral nature of memory, tapping into an obsession of human purpose as old as the Iliad. This novel is many things but it is not a love story, it is a story of love. Through love, Flanagan assigns purpose to horror, contradiction, failure and hope. It is a most satisfying and understated examination of the human condition.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    The Kirkreview blog offers discussion on writers and writing, as well as the ephemeral and quotidian influences that shape this art. And there's commentary. The rest of the Kirkreview site contains hard-nosed reviews.

    Archives

    April 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly