The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan is a "novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love. This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost." (according to the Random House blurb).

Which sounds like it should be my kind of book, but I simply couldn't engage with it or care about the main character Dorrigo Evans. It may have been 'savagely beautiful' but I just found myself completely alienated by Dorrigo. I didn't care about him and didn't want to know any more about him.

Several people whose literary opinions I trust, loved this book and think it's a masterpiece, a classic in the making, but it was too much for me. I never found a way in. That happens sometimes.