Author:Richard Flannagan
If your choice in holiday reads tend to something light this one isn’t for you.
Myself, I enjoy adding something a bit more challenging to my To Read list while sitting next to the pool as I have the time to put the effort in. I can certainly say that last year’s Booker Prize winner repays the concentration it requires in spades.
In brutal – lyrical – detail, the book covers the entire life of Dorrigo Evans, distinguished medic and Australian war hero. The first nonlinear section jumps around from Dorrigo’s childhood in Tasmania, his philandering old age, and an affair he had just before his war posting. He is not a Good Man. Then a change in gear.
The central 150 or so pages of the novel focus on a single harrowing day in his life as the CO for a group of slave laborers literally working themselves to death building the Burma Railway for the Japanese army. The actions and inner thoughts of the Aussie soldiers and their camp guards are laid bare in increasingly bleak detail. The cost Dorrigo has to pay as the men’s leader and doctor trying to live up to their image of him as the “Big Fella” brings him to a personal Calvary. This section has some of the most powerful writing about war that I have read.
The final section of the book returns to the style of its beginning as it follows the post-war fate of the surviving soldiers and guards, how they dealt with the terrible events they participated in and the psychic consequences of their actions.
Again I emphasize this is not an easy read and it isn’t perfect; some of the final ironies of Dorrigo’s life are a little too neat. That said it one of the most powerful, books I have read in years. It is poetic and left me thinking hard about the role of remembrance and what makes a Good Person.
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
All Quiet on the Western Front, Sven Hassel books (seriously).
One thing you’ve learned
Richard Flannagan is a great writer.This is the first thing I read of his. It wont be the last.
My Dad told me – nay, insisted, I read this. It’s on the Kindle when I get through my other Good Books that I really must read…
Good to hear his (occasionally lunatic) taste has been vindicated
This was one of my holiday reads as well. As Big JIm says, it ain’t perfect by any means. But I agree – there are scenes, particularly those depicting the horrors of the the conditions the POWs endure in building the railway which will stay with me for a long time. It’s a controlled book but also a palpably angry one (Flanagan’s father was one of those POWs) and none the worse for that.
Another hearty endorsement. I was completely caught up in some of the most powerful writing I’ve ever read. He’ll probably survive the fuss over yet another Tony Abbott captain’s call: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/les-murray-claims-abbott-swifty-on-richard-flanagan-book/story-e6frg8nf-1227151785011
Paywalled, alas.
Yep great book – gripped me from early on. At times an ordeal to get through the pages of brutality at other times his analysis of Dorrigo ‘s emotional detachment from his relationships had me self reflecting.
For me a mark of a great writer is to have ms re read passages for their sheer elegance , deftness, insight etc. I did this often.