![]() His obsession is Amy, a woman he met seemingly by chance, who has made the rest of his existence-including his fiancee-seem drab and lifeless. “His pounding head, the pain in every movement and act and thought, seemed to have as its cause and remedy her, and only her and only her and only her,” rhapsodizes Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon who will be hailed as a national hero for his leadership in World War II, though he feels deeply unworthy. But the novel’s deep flaw is a pivotal plot development that aims at the literary heights of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary but sounds too often like a swoon-worthy bodice ripper. The scenes of Australian POWs held by the Japanese have power and depth, as do the postwar transformations of soldiers on both sides. ![]() ![]() A literary war novel with a split personality, about a protagonist who loathes his dual character.Īmbition leads to excess in the sixth novel by Flanagan ( Wanting, 2009, etc.), a prizewinning writer much renowned in his native Australia. ![]()
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