Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a gripping, complex novel about war, love and loss. Tasmanian physician Dorrigo Evans is 77, an age that’s ripe for reflection, and his recollections provide the underpinning for an expansive narrative. Dorrigo’s affair with Amy Mulvaney, his uncle’s wife, and his experience as a prisoner in the hands of the Japanese during World War II are the formative experiences of his life. As a POW, he worked on the Thailand-Burma Railway in the Burmese jungle, performing backbreaking labor that takes its toll on him and his fellow prisoners, a varied cast of men that Flanagan brings to memorable life. The narrative moves fluidly through time, shifting backward to Dorrigo’s childhood and moving forward again into wartime. Dorrigo’s postwar years are filled with memories of Amy and of the comrades who toiled beside him in the jungle. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, this impressive novel has earned Flanagan much-deserved acclaim. He writes with deep compassion about heartbreak, the horrors of war and the difficulties of escaping the past. 

FIELD WORK
Euphoria by Lily King is a fascinating blend of fact and fiction based on the life of Margaret Mead. British anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been doing research in New Guinea for years. Mulling over the death of his brothers and feeling discouraged by his work, Andrew is gripped by loneliness and despair. His outlook changes when he crosses paths with fellow anthropologists Nell Stone and her capricious husband, Fen. Nell is ardent about her work, and her presence inspires Andrew. His discovery of a new tribe kindles passions among the trio, as Andrew becomes fixated on his new discovery—and on Nell. Named one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Euphoria is an adventure-filled novel written with authority and lyrical grace—a book that transports the reader through sheer narrative drive even as it offers an insightful look at a formative era in anthropological research. This is an unforgettable book that enriches Mead’s biography.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS
Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is at once an epic coming-of-age novel and a sophisticated art-world thriller. The narrator, Theo Decker, is 13 when the novel opens and struggling with the loss of his mother. After her death in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a valuable Dutch painting ends up in Theo’s hands—a rare work that changes the course of his life. Growing up, Theo lives with the family of a school chum on Park Avenue, then moves in with his father in Las Vegas, where he befriends Boris, a Ukrainian. He eventually makes his way back to New York to work at an antiques store, where he finds himself in the middle of an international mystery, related to the painting, of course. Danger, under-the-table art deals and an appealing protagonist make this novel—Tartt’s third—a true page-turner.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

One of Australia's most celebrated authors, Flanagan has garnered multiple awards for his fiction (Wanting), nonfiction (And What Do You Do, Mr. Gable?), and directing (The Sound of One Hand Clapping). He has an uncanny ability to write literary prose with journalistic exactness set against cinematic landscapes. Taking its name from a collection of haiku poems by Matsuo Basho-, this novel is set at the end of World War II in a Japanese POW camp. Australian prisoners, led by physician Dorrigo Evans, are assigned the grueling task of building the Thai-Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway and famously depicted in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. (Flanagan's father had been a POW and worked on the railway.) Amid daily violence, disease, and death, both the prisoners and the guards search for a sense of normalcy as they remain duty-bound to hierarchy. As the war ends and soldiers return to civilian life, each struggles to find meaning outside the routines of imprisonment. Dorrigo, in particular, has trouble reconciling his status as hero with the unshakable trauma he's experienced. VERDICT Utilizing prose and poems, Flanagan articulates the silent experiences and fractured memories of war. Not so much for fans of historical fiction, this narrative will instead appeal to the deeply introspective reader. [See Prepub Alert, 2/3/14.]—Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Australian author Flanagan has anticipated writing this novel much of his life, working on it for 12 years and completing it on the day his father died. His father had been a survivor of a Japanese POW camp and the brutal building of the Thai-Burma death railway, famously depicted in The Bridge on the River Kwai, as is the protagonist here. In the POW camp, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans struggles to protect his men, even as he recalls an illicit affair from the past. A letter from home changes everything, and the story is brought up to the present day. Reviews from Australia and the UK have been, not surprisingly, ecstatic.

From bestselling Australian writer Flanagan (Gould's Book of Fish) comes a supple meditation on memory, trauma, and empathy that is also a sublime war novel. Initially, it is related through the reminiscences of Dorrigo Evans, a 77-year-old surgeon raised in Tasmania whose life has been filtered through two catastrophic events: the illicit love affair he embarked on with Amy Mulvaney, his uncle's wife, as a young recruit in the Australian corps and his WWII capture by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. Most of the novel recounts Dorrigo's experience as a POW in the Burmese jungle on the "speedo," horrific work sessions on the "Death Railway" that leave most of his friends dead from dysentery, starvation, or violence. While Amy, with the rest of the world, believes him dead, Dorrigo's only respite comes from the friends he tries to keep healthy and sane, fellow sufferers such as Darky Gardiner, Lizard Brancussi, and Rooster MacNiece. Yet it is Dorrigo's Japanese adversary, Major Nakamura, Flanagan's most conflicted and fully realized character, whose view of the war—and struggles with the Emperor's will and his own postwar fate—comes to overshadow Dorrigo's story, especially in the novel's bracing second half. Pellucid, epic, and sincerely touching in its treatment of death, this is a powerful novel. 50,000-copy first printing.(Aug.)