Instead, the co-incidences make the characters think there must be some meaning when there is not. While the co-incidences often drive the plot forward, it’s not in a convenient way. I think it works it reinforces the novel’s random universe. It is a narrative unusually driven by co-incidence. Flanagan performs a remarkable feat of empathy to make their worldview and behaviour explicable, to give us a sense of what it might have been like to have been inside their minds, and in this to re-humanise them and remind us that we may not have been as heroic as we think in the same circumstances. In the world of this novel, it’s these moments of light which are the best one can hope for in life.ĭespite its brutality, it’s also a novel of compassion, and an important source of this are the convincing chapters from the point of view of Japanese officers and a Korean guard who were overseeing the camp.

One particular scene shines with love, and that is the generous hospitality of the Greek fish and chip shop owner to describe it would give too much away, when I do hope you read it. The novel’s brutality means it earns its kindnesses and moments of love so much more than other novels. One of its significant achievements is to show how living and dying in a prisoner of war camp is an intensification of the drives and dilemmas all of us live with.Īppropriately, in telling of torture, starvation and cruelty, it’s a brutal novel. At its centre – literally and metaphorically – is a lengthy account of the characters’ lives and deaths on the Burma Railway during World War Two, but it extends before and after that period to show the full impact of war.

Perhaps some readers will avoid it, thinking it a war novel, but it is actually a novel about all of life. A 17-year-old was the driver, a 16-year-old was in the left rear and the two 14-year-olds were on the right side of the vehicle, in the front and back, and took the brunt of the crash.Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North has immense scope. The teens were on the way home from getting food following a local tennis event. Singh allegedly had a blood alcohol level of.

Officials say 34-year-old Amandeep Singh was driving on the wrong side of Route 106 Wednesday night and collided with an Alfa Romeo with four teens inside. JERICHO, Nassau County (WABC) - A funeral was held Friday for one of the two teens killed when a wrong-way driver slammed into their car in Jericho.Ī private service for 14-year-old Ethan Falkowitz was held at Temple Sinai of Roslyn.Ī funeral for Drew Hassenbein, also 14, is scheduled for Sunday. The two victims of the crash were identified as Roslyn students and young tennis stars Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz.

The long road to the deep north review