Is this history more important than ANZAC Day?

And in a paragraph that further evokes his suffering,,.

'The abyss of the years – with their historic wars, their celebrated inventions, their innumerable horrors and miraculous wonders – had, he realised, all been about nothing. The bomb, the Cold War, Cuba and transistor radios had no power over her swagger, her imperfect ways… her face, slightly gaunt with its defining lines, seemed to him full of some hard-won self-possession.'

He had a few moments to decide whether to call out or walk on by. He walks, regrets it and realises it is too late. She has also seen him, but confused because she thinks he betrayed her, says nothing. In any case she is being nursed by her sister through a terminal illness and has not long to live.

Evans is, reluctantly, on his way to Tasmania to see Ella and their children at the time of the bridge incident. His family becomes trapped in a bush fire and he drives like a crazed person to rescue them from the side of the road. He runs to grab them and, for a moment, clutches his wife's head 'hard against his'. And, as Flanagan narrates, 'it was more affection than his three children had seen their father show their mother in a lifetime.'

Narrow Road does much more than inform, entertain and hold its readership. It provokes big questions.

What is it that makes a man good? What saves a man?

Evans is a hero to his men during the war and a hero to the public after. He is a great protector, caring for the prisoners he leads, fighting for them, and doing everything to keep sick men off the line. By never appearing to lose hope, he gives them hope in what essentially was a hopeless situation.

When he comes home, he is feted and acclaimed but, inside, he is empty. The camaraderie shared by the surviving men – at least until their demons destroy them – is not accessible to him. They are tortured by their experiences but he is crippled emotionally, not just by the horrors of war, but by losing the woman he loved.

Too easily we choose our heroes, as the public chose Evans. It fits the easy 'brave men versus villains' way we are taught to judge the world. It makes us look at life through the prism of what should be, rather than what is.

I like Evans and he blames himself unnecessarily for failing his mates.

Undoubtedly he saved lives and inspired men. But as his family escapes the bushfire, his children absorbing 'the tormented hopeless feeling of two people who lived together in a love not yet love, nor yet not; an unshared life shared ', it seems his decision to walk away from the person he really is, has become the thing he regrets the most.

A few weeks after finishing the book I took myself to see The Railwayman, a biographical drama, about a death railway POW (Colin Firth) who meets a woman on a train (Nicole Kidman) and marries her, only to be consumed by rage and despair about the treatment he received from his Japanese interrogator.

At his wife's urging, he confronts the man and they become friends.

Love, war, horror, sacrifice and redemption are too neatly rolled up and resolved in a two hour script. If you can get past an oddly young looking Colin Firth and a Nicole Kidman with facial expressions as fixed as her cardigan, you may, like me, feel this film is a little too light about a very dark subject.

So my suggestion; don't rush to see the Railwayman but make sure you read Flanagan. And, in doing so, feel proud of our heritage and proud of his writing.