![]() ![]() It would have been better if he had witnessed the account of the Korean soldier’s cell after the war, or if he had spoken with one of the Japanese colonels, or been witness to what happened to them. By shifting from one pov to another this weakens the believability of the main character, Dorrigo. The latter, I think, points out one of the weaknesses of the book: that you are expected to live in the head of various characters, including two Japanese generals, Dorrigo’s lover Amy, a Korean soldier serving in the Japanese army, and various others, whilst his own story unfolds. ![]() I am aware that The Narrow Road to the Deep North has had mixed reviews, with some awarding it a 5* out of 5 (see for example the Guardian and Daily Telegraph reviews) whilst another review by Michael Hofmann in the LRB of 18 th December 2014 gives a devastating put down: ‘ In construction, the book is the half-hearted retrospective of a dying old man (the life flashing before the eyes – think of something like Hermann Broch’s Death of Virgil) that forsakes it tether for the more leisurely freedom of an impersonal series of chronological flashbacks only to leave that in turn for an account of other characters in their own personal circumstances, in Australia, in Japan, in Korea, of which Dorrigo Evans can have known little or nothing at all.’ ![]()
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