8 great novels written in the second person.'The Black Notebook' by Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti).‘The House on the Hill’ by Cesare Pavese (translated by Tim Parks).10 years of favourite reads from the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year shortlists.‘The Black Notebook’ by Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti).To find out more, visit my A Year With William Trevor page. Kaggsysbookishrambli… on ‘The Black Notebook…Ĭelebrate the work of William Trevor with a year-long read-along in 2023. Join 2,725 other subscribers Recent Comments The price tag on the front of this edition shows I paid £2.99 for it instead of the £5.99RRP. I bought this copy a couple of years ago from Harbour Books, a lovely independent bookshop in Whitstable, on the Kent coast, which had a lot of old Vintage stock going cheaply. This is my 1st book for #20BooksOfSummer and my 20th book for #TBR40. In 1996, The Railway Man won both the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction and the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography. It’s an astonishing read.įans of Richard Flanagan’s Booker-award-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North will find much to like here. But when the opportunity to meet him face to face arises, Lomax realises that he has the capacity to forgive - and it is this extraordinary meeting, between two men, both in their 80s, that gives this book its remarkable redemptive power. When he accidentally discovers his torturer is still alive, he dreams of revenge. Although I could not have admitted it, I was still fighting the war in all those years of peace. When confrontation came, I would resist with immense stubborn energy, revenging myself on the Kempeitai and the guards in every encounter. I felt sometimes like a guest in my own house. I was often inward-looking, a victim of a strange passivity that made me absorb experiences like blotting paper but which made it difficult for me to give it made me appear slow, yet I was anything but lazy. The Railway Man really comes into its own after the war is over, when Lomax returns home to try to pick up his life where he left off, only to discover that he’s not the person he thought he was. He was so desperate to escape his torturers, he threw himself down the stairs so that he could be taken to the hospital in Changi, where conditions weren’t much better but at least he’d “enjoy” a slight reprieve.) (Lomax had both his arms broken in a terrible beating in another instance he was water-boarded. The main section, which is about life as a POW, includes descriptions of horrific acts by Japanese soldiers against the prisoners, Lomax included, but they are not gratuitous: they are central to the story. The prose is clear, succinct and free of sentiment. I haven’t seen the film, so am not sure how faithful it is to Lomax’s book (Lomax died in 2012, so never got to see the film).Īdmittedly it’s written in a fairly dry, reserved style and follows the tropes of traditional autobiography. Many of you may know the story already from the 2013 film adaptation starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. I was drawn to the railways so much that they have been a backdrop to almost every turning-point in my life, and have led me into unhappiness and torment, as well as some of the only real contentment I have ever known. The title comes from Lomax’s love of trains and all things train related, an obsession he discovered as a young boy. It looks at what happened to him when the war ended and finishes with him meeting the Japanese soldier who tortured him 50 years earlier. The book charts Lomax’s life from his quiet childhood in Edinburgh to his time in the British Army during the Second World War. He was just one of thousands of POWs forced to build the Burma-Siam Railway under brutal, inhumane conditions. Scottish-born Eric Lomax, the author of this extraordinary autobiography, The Railway Man, was a young officer with the Royal Corps of Signals when he was captured by the Japanese Imperial Army during the fall of Singapore in February 1942. It packed such a powerful punch and rounded off all that had gone before with such aplomb and grace and wisdom that it made me cry. We all know famous first lines from books, but how many can quote the last line? It was the ending of this book - and specifically the final sentence - that really got me. Non-fiction – paperback Vintage 322 pages 2014.
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