The Narrow Road To The Deep North, Flanagan - B +

                                              This novel won the Booker for 2013. It is the story of Col. Dorrigo Evans, physician to some of the 22,000 Australians captured when Singapore fell to the Empire of Japan in February 1942.  A third of them died constructing the Siam-Burma Railway. Locomotive C 5631, the first to transverse the 400 + kilometer Death Railway is enshrined at Yaksuni, along with 1068 war criminals, some of whom worked as overseers of the Aussies.  Allied POWs were but small fraction, as somewhere between 100,000 - 200,000 died during the construction. This is as apt a description of unspeakable horror and filth as I have come across. Starvation, ringworm, dysentery, pellagra, cholera, beri-beri, malaria and vicious treatment were the lot of the British and Empire troops, for whom the loss of a boot was a fatal event. Evans tended to their care, faced the Japanese with verve and became the legendary 'Big Fella' to his men. Most importantly, he survived.  As the war passed further and further into the continent's collective memory, he became more and more important and eventually, lionized.

                                              This book is also a nuanced study of memory and memories. For the Japanese, it is  conflicted memories.  They built the railway for the Emperor in record time.  The fact that men who had surrendered and were no longer worthy of respect died is an understandable consequence of the task. To be punished by the Allies for doing their job was incomprehensible to the guards.  But the memory that dominates the book is of Dorry Evans' love for Amy, the young wife of his uncle and unquestionably the love of his life. They spent much of the summer of 1941 together - he, a training officer in the Army and she, the mistress of the family inn in Adelaide.  It was wild, passionate, senseless and unforgettable. It carried him through his long imprisonment. It helped him be the man he was expected to be. It hounded him through his long post-war marriage and career. He believed her dead until he saw her in Sydney in the mid-60's, but could not say a word as she walked by. Would he have been a better man with her? Or,was the memory of her more important?

                                              The Times reviewer points out that Evans spent a great deal of time talking to his father who was a POW survivor who lived to 98. Without him, he could not have provided the details about the smell of the cholera hut, the horrible stories that are revealed, and the generally remarkable detail that make this such an extraordinary tale.  That said, the Booker award praised as a "novel of love and war." It is both, and it is very good.