The Lower River

Jul 30, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just like them, he was a wisp of diminishing humanity, with nothing in his pockets--hardly had pockets!--and he felt a lightness because of it. With no money he was insubstantial and beneath notice. As soon as everyone knew he had nothing, they would stop asking him for money, would stop talking to him altogether, probably. Yet tugging at this lightness was another sensation of weight, his poverty like an anchor. He couldn't move or go anywhere; he had no bargaining power. He was anchored by an...more

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May 22, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

A pilgrimage usually brings to mind young college grads or drop-outs backpacking and seeking to find “who I really am,” or the forty-something just-divorced and tired-of-the-rat-race individual plagued with ennui or provoked by accumulated reproaches. Or is it the pilgrimage to Mecca or Delphi? It does suggest a spiritual journey-- a life-defining, soul-searching odyssey.

In Theroux’s latest novel, sixty-two year old businessman, Ellis Hock, embarks on a pilgrimage. Scorned by his wife and spurne...more A pilgrimage usually brings to mind young college grads or drop-outs backpacking and seeking to find “who I really am,” or the forty-something just-divorced and tired-of-the-rat-race individual plagued with ennui or provoked by accumulated reproaches. Or is it the pilgrimage to Mecca or Delphi? It does suggest a spiritual journey-- a life-defining, soul-searching odyssey.

In Theroux’s latest novel, sixty-two year old businessman, Ellis Hock, embarks on a pilgrimage. Scorned by his wife and spurned by his daughter, he decides to sell his men’s clothing business in Medford, Massachusetts, leave his home of almost forty years, and return to the “lower river” in the country of Malawi, in a remote bush town called Malabo. Ellis romanticizes this African village that he spent four Peace Corps years as a teacher in after college, and resolves he can “go back” and return to the happiest years of his life, living in a mud hut with a thatched roof, and commingling with the natives.

And so begins the expedition of Ellis Hock, to the southernmost part of a southern province, home of the Sena people, in a land of few clothes and elaborate dance rituals. He is White Man and Mwamuna wa Njoka—Snake Man; Ellis was known during his Peace Corps years for his deft handling and collection of black mambas, green mambas, puff adders, spitting cobras, the swimming sun snake, the egg-eating wolf-snake, the boomslang mbobo, and the nsato, or rock python. Hock had a knack and a confidence to govern these scaly reptiles.

Ellis was also recognized for building a school, and initiating plans for a medical clinic and paved roads. He regarded himself as a savior of sorts, the benefactor of a poverty stricken village. But did he know himself then, and the people he lived with and taught. He is confident that he will be received with open arms on his return, that his goodwill and proprietary feelings about the region, about Africa, would be recognized and embraced.

The novel of Ellis’ return to Malobo is full of surprises. Be prepared for an unorthodox narrative, unvarnished and bold, stripped of the political correct approach of progressives and alms-givers, including the well-meaning philanthropists who patronize the less fortunate, who are ignorant of their own contribution to apathy and greed—unenlightened (because of their phlegmatic sense of charity) that these uneducated, indigent people are not much different from you or me at the core. You will peer inside the militaristic supply depots necessitated by do-gooder celebrities who spread their money and smiles and food drops without having a clue about the complex nature of the regional customs and hierarchies.

Other works that have influenced this book have been mentioned in many reviews, such as Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS and Graham Green’s THE HEART OF THE MATTER. Theroux’s chronicled travelogue through Africa, DARK STAR SAFARI, reflects many of the themes in this story—of return, and a desire to redeem lost youth. There is also a vivid allusion to William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES, a ripe and menacing glimpse into primitive culture. It reminded me of a few select lines in the movie APOCALPYSE NOW, from General Corman:

“Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.”

Hock’s trek to his idealized paradise is an unforgettable life lesson, written with intelligence and raw clarity. Theroux can be a bit long-winded at times; he isn’t into economy of words. However, his technique serves the story well, with the subtle and nuanced delivery of a ruthless civilization, one that is all too ferociously human.(less)

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Jul 16, 2012 Lisa Hayes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

Read more last night--depressing--everything I thought would happen apparently has. Downhill since the day the Union flag was lowered. Corruption and stupidity.

Stuggling to finish this one. I probably will, but it just isn't holding my interest very well at this point.

So far, this does NOT make me want to go back to Malawi. A Malawi with whole new forms of corruption.....but hearing place names does bring to mind so many people--all of whom are likely dead. That part is very sad.

Paul Theroux and...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Bill Womack rated it 2 of 5 stars

I came to The Lower River with high expectations, mostly founded on Paul Theroux's wonderful travel writing. What I loved about books like Riding the Iron Rooster is true for this one as well; nobody describes unusual or exotic locales quite like him. Sadly, that's where the wonder stopped this time.

Ellis Hock was a compelling enough character in the beginning. Characters approaching old age seem to seldom get the starring role in contemporary novels, so I though it refreshing that we'd get to s...more I came to The Lower River with high expectations, mostly founded on Paul Theroux's wonderful travel writing. What I loved about books like Riding the Iron Rooster is true for this one as well; nobody describes unusual or exotic locales quite like him. Sadly, that's where the wonder stopped this time.

Ellis Hock was a compelling enough character in the beginning. Characters approaching old age seem to seldom get the starring role in contemporary novels, so I though it refreshing that we'd get to see him go through a late-life crisis, try to re-insert himself into his youth, to reboot his life. I found him relatable, if a bit of a downer, and the beginnings of his journey rang true. Then came Africa.

Without spoiling things too much, it's safe to say that the Malawi he remembered from his 20's was not where he found himself in his 60's. Instead of the joyous homecoming he anticipated, he was met with antipathy by the locals, quickly devolving into something far more sinister. Even as I write this, the premise sounds more exciting than what actually lies on the pages.

Maybe that's the problem; the story just lies there. It's as if the pacing itself got heatstroke early on, and couldn't be bothered to rise from the hammock for the rest of the story. Themes repeat themselves ad nauseum without gaining much in the way of insight. The characters, Hock included, rarely stray from the expected. The story arc is as flat as the lazy river itself, tepid and predictable. There are surprises sprinkled throughout the story, but they seem calibrated to drive home a single point: hungry people will do whatever it takes to find a meal. It's true, I'm sure, but is that enough to hang a novel on?

The whole exercise just felt uninspired and lugubrious. At one point, I found myself stopping to see where I was in the novel, and actually rolling my eyes that I still had half the work left to read. That's not a good sign. By the time the novel reached its sudden yet curiously anticlimactic ending, I was thoroughly disengaged from both the village and the weatherbeaten Mr. Hock.

I gave this one two stars. The first is out of pure nostalgia for the great works Paul Theroux has produced before; the second for a few interesting characters (even if they don't progress much if at all during the tale), and for his knack for setting a scene in a way that puts an armchair traveler right into the thick of the African bush. If only he'd picked up the pace, if only the journey could be said to have changed the lives of at least one of the characters... if only.(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

I rate this book highly although it is incredibly grim and depressing and has a couple of big flaws like repetiveness and occasionally implausible plot turns.

This is a story of lost youth and the impossibility of reconnecting with the dreams of those times. Ellis Hock is a 60-ish haberdasher who finds himself suddenly alone. His wife divorces him after finding incriminatingly intimate emails on his iPhone; his daughter is an estranged brat, and his multi-generational downtown store falls victim...more

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May 13, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.

Arriving at the dusty village,

...more

Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.

Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him—the White Man with no fear of snakes—and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?

Interweaving memory and desire, hope and despair, salvation and damnation, this is a hypnotic, compelling, and brilliant return to a terrain about which no one has ever written better than Theroux.

Review

"What we have finally is a relentless tale of suspense adroitly presented. Theroux’s practiced hand in the matter of dialogue and scene-making is strongly in evidence. No one will nod off reading The Lower River...It’s a particular kind of frightening fun to watch evil flexing and spreading its leathery wings, and really feel it. The Lower River gives the reader just that." -- The New York Review of Books

" ‘The Lower River’ is riveting in its storytelling and provocative in its depiction of this African backwater, infusing both with undertones of slavery and cannibalism, savagery and disease. Theroux exposes paternalism in Hock’s Peace Corps nostalgia, his ‘sense of responsibility, almost a conceit of ownership.’ That sense of responsibility, and Hock’s modest contribution to the welfare of a people he was once genuinely fond of, has been replaced by a harsher mode of operation, run by coldhearted contractors living apart in impregnable compounds. ‘I have to leave,’ Hock pleads. ‘I’m going home.’ To which the village headman replies, with chilling menace, ‘This is your home, father.’ " -- New York Times Book Review

"In this hypnotically compelling fiction, [Theroux] wrestles with questions of good intentions and harsh reality...A gripping and vital novel that reads like Conrad or Greene—in short, a classic." -- Booklist, starred

"Theroux successfully grafts keen observations about the efficacy of international aid and the nature of nostalgia to a swift-moving narrative through a beautifully described landscape." -- PW, starred

"Extraordinary...The suspense is enriched by Theroux’s loving attention to local customs and his subversive insights...Theroux has recaptured the sweep and density of his 1981 masterpiece The Mosquito Coast. That’s some achievement." -- Kirkus, starred

"Theroux's latest can be read as straight-up suspense, but those unafraid of following him into the heart of darkness will be rewarded with much to discuss in this angry, ironic depiction of misguided philanthropy in a country dense with natural resources yet unable to feed its people." -- Library Journal

About the Author

PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

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Apr 03, 2013 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

So sad.... There is Ellis Hock at first at home having gone downhill somewhat in life by being alienated from his daughter and divorced from his wife. All he can dream of is a return to his days as a Peace Corp volunteer in Malawi when he was young and everything seemed bright. He was accomplishing at that time and felt satisfaction.

How depressing it is to read of his folly of thinking he could return to the very boondocks of where he had been then and find that people are leading a more hardscr...more

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Jan 10, 2013 E.R. Yatscoff rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ellis Hock, stuck in a mundane, unhappy life, reaches a crossroads in life, a mid-life crisis. He believes his time in Africa with an aid group was one of his happiest times ever. There he was Mzunga, snake-man and treated like a demi-god. Almost abandoning everything in the U.S., he revisits this happy place hoping to see old friends and the fruits of his past work there as a teacher in a tiny village. Bad idea. He descends into a black hole. Like a lot of Africa, without foreigners and foreign...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Carolyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have read many of Paul Theroux books, the nonfiction travel and the novels, which are, in my mind, travel adventures themselves. I chose 'The Lower River' because of my own recent travel to the African continent, and my lingering questions about those folks who continue to live in mud hut villages and corrugated iron roof shack towns, yet have mobile phones and internet access. My questions still linger. Not the fault of Paul Theroux...the author brings to life that way of living, and the inab...more

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Oct 16, 2012 Charmayne rated it 2 of 5 stars

I found "The Lower River" unsettling for numerous reasons. Ellis Hock's unrelenting desire to prove he is loved comes across as desperate and his seeming lack of a backbone is infuriating. He cowers to nearly everyone and is the root of many of his problems due to his carelessness - though is content to sulk in his misery. He views his time in Malawi during his 20s through far-too-rose-colored glasses and yearns to return there, which he does upon his retirement. Unfortunately (surprise, surpris...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Sull rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sull by: gift

Harrowing but unputdownable novel of expat dreams gone very very wrong. The hero finds his present civilized American life empty (business sold) & loveless (ex-wife & kids). He's always remembered his Peace Corps days in Malawi as a youthful golden time of authentic happiness, friendship, & love. So he returns & slowly enters a confusing but dark nightmare of old age, frailty, betrayal, & horror that nearly kills him. No one does the expat dream gone frighteningly surreal bet...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Deborah Purdon added it

I had never read Paul Theroux before, and I was excited to finally tackle one of his books. I almost wish I hadn't. It is a testament to his talent and knowledge that his book upset me and haunted me so much. The novel really called into question what I do for a living and what my employer does. Is it really all useless? Theroux's main character (now I can't even remember his name) served in the Peace Corps for four years, and walked around for forty years thinking those were the best years of h...more

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Jun 26, 2012 RJ rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, fiction

Divorced clothing store owner returns to his Peace Corps days in Nyasaland/Malawi to find that things have changed for the worse. Contrasting 60's idealism with the realities of post-colonial Africa, Theroux takes the reader on a dark remorseless journey into that world. Many of Theroux's recent ideas present themselves here; the failure of the foreign aid industry, the globalization of crude popular culture, and the avarice, greed and barbarism bubbling just under the surface everywhere. In Med...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Roger Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best novel I've read in several years, and a beautifully-written climax to a distinguished writing career. I've enjoyed Theroux's fiction and nonfiction work for many years, but this is his best work yet. A great many sentences in this book deserve to be read out loud, like small stanzas of poetry, and a great many penetrating observations on human nature and destiny will cause you to pause and reflect before continuing. Hock is an American in late middle age who loses his marriage and his b...more

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May 30, 2012 Kasa Cotugno rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: location-africa, location-usa-new-england, subject-travel

Paul Theroux is blessed with a consummate talent for writing and a restless nature for travel. Taken together, we readers are blessed that he combines these qualities and shares them with us. Like Jonathan Rabin (a friend of Theroux with whom, they both have informed, he swaps book galleys prepublication), Theroux is equally adept at fiction and non-, but Theroux spent some time as a young man working for the Peace Corps, in the landscape he describes as did Elias Hock, central character in this...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Shawn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This shit's bananas. Paul Theroux has written everything from Chicago Loop to The Mosquito Coast, and in The Lower River (c. 2012) I believe he hits a home run.
It could just be me. The protagonist is an old guy (10 years older than me), and I can relate. After he loses his wife & daughter to estrangement, he decides to go back to where he was happy. I found enthralling the relationship between the foreigner and the inhabitants of any third world country, in this case, in Africa. It was reall...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Lower River, by Paul Theroux, is a wonderful clash between imagination and reality. This is what gives us fiction--some ground everyone agrees is “real” and some force only an artist can impose upon that reality, i.e., the imagination. The imagination is what makes a work fiction if it’s literature, or some other art form, if it’s not.

The conceit here is that a man well into middle-age sees his marriage and business fall apart and decides to reunite with his past as a Peace Corps volunteer....more

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Jun 28, 2012 Renee rated it 5 of 5 stars

I waited a long time for Paul Theroux’s newest book and he did not disappoint. Lower River is about a middle age man (Ellis Hock) who greatly desires to return to his beloved Africa but never thought it possible. After his wife leaves him, he returns to Malawi (the village where he spent four years with the Peace Corps in his youth).

Arriving at the worn-out village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among th...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Bonnie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ellis Hock is the main character in this story of a lonely man who runs an old-fashioned mensware store in a small town in Massachusetts. When his wife leaves him, he closes his store and buys a ticket for a small village in Malawi, Africa where he spent four years with the Peace Corps on the Lower River. He arrives at the dusty village where he had spent the happiest days of his life. He finds the school he built a ruin and the church and clinic are gone. Apathy has set in among the people, but...more

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Jun 02, 2012 James rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was my first foray into Paul Theroux's fiction, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think that I like his travel books better, but this still has everything that I love about his writing. This is a quick read but it deals with a lot of weighty themes. If you've read Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown, you'll notice a number of parallels between Theroux's own experiences in that book and this fictional one. (I understand that this is common in Theroux's fiction writing.) In fact,...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Katie Llewellyn rated it 2 of 5 stars

As an American currently living in Malawi, I heard about this book and thought it might be interesting. I didn't know much about Theroux before this book, but googled him to find out that yes, he actually was serving as a PCV in Malawi in the 60s. But what really bothered me about this book is the incredibly negative way he showed Malawians. Yes, this is one of the poorest countries in the world. But from my experience (and granted, I have only been here four months rather than four years) I hav...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Mosquito Coast is one of my favorite novels. Read it six or seven years ago, yet for some reason I'd never read anything else by Theroux until now. I randomly saw this in a bookstore, and was hooked from the first paragraph.

Ellis Hock is a 60-ish man whose life has come undone. His wife divorces him and his once-successful, now-failing men's clothing store is finally shuttered for good. His happiest memories being from the years he spent as a young man as an aid worker in a remote african vi...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Sandy Sopko rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love Paul Theroux's style and voice, and I enjoyed the language of this novel, but the story... The main character, Ellis Hock, former Peace Corps volunteer returning to his former post in Malawi all dewey eyed after 40 years, was very difficult to identify with, in spite of having two current PCVs in my own family. I found I couldn't even root for Ellis to make it out! As the story opens, Ellis is under attack when his wife discovers his daliances by reading his email on a new phone she buys...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anyone who has read Paul Theroux knows one of his key themes is the American innocent abroad, refusing to acknowledge the dark side of the people he encounters…or himself. In many of his past novels, his characters are transplanted into a new culture and struggle to survive against environmental, cultural and psychological pressures.

For those who enjoy Theroux, his latest novel does not disappoint. In fact, it soars.

Once again, we are treated to an anti-hero who is forced to meet his overblown...more Anyone who has read Paul Theroux knows one of his key themes is the American innocent abroad, refusing to acknowledge the dark side of the people he encounters…or himself. In many of his past novels, his characters are transplanted into a new culture and struggle to survive against environmental, cultural and psychological pressures.

For those who enjoy Theroux, his latest novel does not disappoint. In fact, it soars.

Once again, we are treated to an anti-hero who is forced to meet his overblown expectations head-on. And once again there are tendrils of Theroux’s own life: Ellis Hock, like Theroux himself, hails from Medford, Massachusetts and spent time in the backwaters of Malawi as a teacher during a tender age.(Theroux was actually dismissed from the Peace Corps for becoming involved in Malawi’s politics).

Now, forty years later, Hock’s business and marriage have failed, his daughter has revealed her avarice, and he decides to return to The Lower River – the poorest part of a poor country and home of the superstitious Sena people.

The ensuing tale – a tale of salvation and damnation, evocative of Heart of Darkness or Lord of the Flies – is downright hypnotic. Hock is known as the man who handles snakes in a village that fears them; this tale, too, grips around the reader, holding tight, not letting go. Hock “did not want to think that Africa was hopeless.” But in reality, “the school would remain a roofless shell, a nest of snake, the office a hideout for the orphan boys, the clinic a ruin.”

The plot twists are so intriguing that I don’t even want to allude to them; suffice to say that Theroux delves deeply into whether a healthy interest in a different culture can coincide with the arrogance and egotism that we bring to that culture. “What do you want? I’m from America. I can get food, I can find money for you,” Hock says, when placed in a potentially dangerous situation. Yet as he later discovers, “You come with money to the poor, and they are so frenzied by hunger that all they see is the money. They never see your face, and so when the money is gone, you are revealed as mere flesh: a surprise. They don’t know you.”

The most riveting parts of the story are the power plays between Hock and Manyenga, the cynical and sniveling village chief, who oppresses him with meaningless gestures of honor, baring to the core what he believes the mzungo “divinity” – the white man – is all about. There is much to mull over: “This looks such a simple place. But no, everyone lies, so you can’t know it all…If you’re hungry, you will do everything, you will agree to anything, you will say anything.” Once more, Theroux has masterfully displayed a clash of the cultures and their false expectations.

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Aug 22, 2012 Wendy rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am apparently on a grim, depressing role with my book choices these days. Paul Theroux is one of my favorite authors. Period. Both Dark Star Safari and The Happy Isles of Oceania are two of my favorite books. But I walked away from this one multiple times because of disinterest. I finished it, which was more of a testament to my faith in Theroux than the story itself.

There is a lot of good writing in this book - that's a given from Theroux. He continually shines an unfaltering, light of truth...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Paul Theroux’s latest novel, "The Lower River," is a page turner about Ellis Hock, from Medford MA, who travels to Africa. Hock worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote village in Malawi for four years when he was young. In the time between when Hock left the village in Malawi and when decides to go back, Hock has lived a stereotypical American life as a suburban businessman. At the age of 62, he feels alone and empty. His decision that his village in Malawi was a paradise and the only plac...more

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Mar 31, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A Compelling, Mesmerizing Exploration of an American’s Return to Africa

One of our greatest chroniclers in fact and in fiction of Americans living abroad, Paul Theroux returns in this beguiling, compelling, 21st Century version of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", weaving a most fascinating tale of an old American man struggling to reclaim the past glories of his youth as a Peace Corps teacher in a tropical Eden he once knew; a remote Malawi village. Basing the prior African history of his pro...more A Compelling, Mesmerizing Exploration of an American’s Return to Africa

One of our greatest chroniclers in fact and in fiction of Americans living abroad, Paul Theroux returns in this beguiling, compelling, 21st Century version of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", weaving a most fascinating tale of an old American man struggling to reclaim the past glories of his youth as a Peace Corps teacher in a tropical Eden he once knew; a remote Malawi village. Basing the prior African history of his protagonist Ellis Hock on his own Peace Corps experience in Malawi, Theroux does not present readers with a thinly fictionalized version of himself; instead, he renders a compelling portrait of a man, Hock, possessed by demons of his own choosing in his Medford, Massachusetts home, and compelled to seek refuge in his youthful heroic past, willing to sever all ties to his family and friends, merely to find bliss once more in that tropical paradise, the remote Malawi village, that was his Peace Corps home for four years. Instead, he ventures into an almost unrecognizable tropical realm of desolation and despair, replete with villages inhabited by the sick and dying and those only by abandoned, orphaned children, ravaged by the scourges of HIV/AIDS, banditry and wartime looting; his tropical Eden transformed into a Dante's Inferno, into a melancholy Purgatory that plunges all too quickly into Hock's own personal and savage Hell. "The Lower River" is a most profound fictional look of a clash of cultures, with Hock as an "Everyman" of Western imperial arrogance and benevolence pitted against weary, restless Malawi natives who have eked out miserable lives born of poverty and despair, resenting Hock and other Westerners for their almost God-like wealth, while understanding that their very survival depends on it. Theroux's latest saga is among his most compelling with ample plot turns and twists worthy of comparison with the best literary thrillers of our time, rendered in splendid prose that affirms his status as one of the finest prose stylists in American literature. "The Lower River" is an emotionally riveting tale destined to be remembered as among the year's finest American novels.

(Reposted from my 2012 Amazon review.)(less)

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Jul 29, 2012 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

How does an author who writes some of my favorite nonfiction so consistently disappoint when it comes to making up his own plots? I've slogged through three of Theroux's attempts at fiction now: My Secret Life, My Other Life, and now The Lower River. I was no fan of the first two books, but this is certainly the weakest of the three. Its themes are as weatherbeaten as its main character, and the plot is just as slow moving and malarial — prone to slopppy sweats of characters and fevered dreams o...more How does an author who writes some of my favorite nonfiction so consistently disappoint when it comes to making up his own plots? I've slogged through three of Theroux's attempts at fiction now: My Secret Life, My Other Life, and now The Lower River. I was no fan of the first two books, but this is certainly the weakest of the three. Its themes are as weatherbeaten as its main character, and the plot is just as slow moving and malarial — prone to slopppy sweats of characters and fevered dreams of ludicrous dimensions — all posited on the hypothesis of "what if a village became a prison?" Unfortunately, the premise is realized only through absurd twists that demand a thorough burying of one's bullshit detector.

How frustrating is this book? Without giving away any vital plot details, let's just say that I found myself laughing out loud at "dramatic moments," predicting "plot twists" a hundred pages in advance, and — most damning — disliking the "sympathetic" characters (including the main one) and rooting for the "evil" ones. How does a man who live for four years in Malawi still have no idea of how go along to get along? For the plot to work, Theroux needs him to be both old hand and ingenue, a contradiction that exposes itself as the story demands further and further suspensions of disbelief.

Why two stars? As others have mentioned, Theroux writes vivid descriptions of people and places that can — at least when disconnected from the plot — effectively carry you away to its distant vistas. This talent is, of course, put to much better use in his travel writing, where it is made the central focus. Here, such descriptions necessarily take a back seat to the plot. He also effectively mines his life in places (he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi) for worthwhile observations about the differences between the country he knew in the 60s and the one he visited again more recently in Dark Star Safari (a book so superior to this it's hard to believe the same man was responsible for both). Occasionally, Theroux (speaking as the protagonist) will make some insight won only from the experience of living and seeing much in the world. Unfortunately, such gems come far too rarely in this overwrought, torpid tale.

Maybe some will find this kind of story and these kinds of characters exciting. As someone who lived in Africa for a couple years, I found Theroux's portrayals of village life, modernization, aid agencies, and culture clash simplistically essentialized and consistently misanthropic. It's as though Theroux knows it's wrong to romanticize the past, but doesn't really know how to talk about the present, and so the reader is forced to endure the regurgitated tension of an inaccurate and insulting theme: Africa wasn't all cannibals back then, but it certainly is now. (less)

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Jun 20, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an engrossing read, a sort of "what if" kind of speculation. The protagonist finds himself in late middle age with a failing business and a failed marriage. Rudderless, he decides to return to the one place he remembers being truly happy, the rural village in Malawi where he taught school in the 60s. What he finds seems at first comforting and then gradually reveals a sinister side. The pace picks up and the writing is descriptive but spare, with beautiful use of metaphor and allusion. S...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Friederike Knabe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, us-lit

Paul Theroux's recent novel, THE LOWER RIVER, follows sixty-something year old Ellis Hock back to Africa to connect with a time forty years ago, "the happiest years of his life", when he was a Peace Corps Volunteer and teacher in a remote village in Malawi. On and off he has been dreaming about that time and place, returning to it in his mind when wandering through his hometown zoo; his memories flooding back with a strong sense of nostalgic longing. Now that his marriage has fallen apart, his b...more Paul Theroux's recent novel, THE LOWER RIVER, follows sixty-something year old Ellis Hock back to Africa to connect with a time forty years ago, "the happiest years of his life", when he was a Peace Corps Volunteer and teacher in a remote village in Malawi. On and off he has been dreaming about that time and place, returning to it in his mind when wandering through his hometown zoo; his memories flooding back with a strong sense of nostalgic longing. Now that his marriage has fallen apart, his business is in decline, he sells all and, almost secretly, embarks on a return visit to the village of his dreams, Malabo. Most of the novel follows Hock's arrival and time in Malawi and in "his remote village". Malawians and expats warn him: "nobody goes there", or "abandon all hope". Yet, it is exactly what Hock is seeking: a place not touched by development, a village that has stood still, frozen in time and that would welcome him as it did all those years ago.

Looking at the highly appreciative and admiring reviews of the novel, I realize that I may be in a small minority to regard this book mostly as a fictionalized version of chpaters from Theroux's travel book Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown, where he describes his return to a remote region of Malawi that looks and feels very much like Malabo. Not surprisingly, the novel draws on the author's personal experiences, both as a traveler in the early twenty first century and as a Peace Corps volunteer there in his younger years. These close ties to physical realities, increased by the detailed descriptions of places and landscapes, make it difficult for this reader to conceive THE LOWER RIVER as a work of fiction alone. I am not fully willing to accept the authenticity of the narrative or the characters, in particular the Africans. While the story is told from Hock's perspective alone, the reader does not get a real sense of life in the community and beyond nor how the situation in the village deteriorated the way it did. Blame is touched on, but only superficially, almost in caricature style. Life beyond Hock's hut and his early morning walks are hazy background, the conditions in the villages only described as they affect Hock directly. The African characters don't come into their own; they are more like stereotypes for particular attitudes: the men and boys greedy, aggressive and devious, the women, young and old, subservient and quiet. Seeing everything through his romantic lens of a time long past where innocence and love was front and centre on his mind, Hock does not appear to make much effort to learn about Malabo's present circumstances or to understand what lies behind the hostile attitude of the community. The reader is in the role of an intimate observer of Hock's daily routines, his many frustrations and a few glimmers of hope. They can instil sympathy and compassion, but, as the narrative speed slows to a crawl and repetition, more likely, turn more and more to irritation. Hock comes across as somebody totally unprepared for his venture, or as one reviewer refers to as a typical "Innocent American abroad".

While the reader follows in great detail the ups and downs of Hock physical and mental state, I for one, missed a more discriminating portrayal of the village, its people and its challenges. The African characters are not fully developed and remain two dimensional. Malabo has been reduced to a state of paralysis due to the villagers' lethargy, caused by poverty, malnutrition, the spread of AIDS and a general lack of initiative. The village strong man, Manyenga, acts towards Hock both as a friend and an enemy. In response Hock turns increasingly passive, not really understanding or accepting what has happened to "his village". Is it possible for him to move beyond his longing for this world that no longer exists?

Influenced by my own experiences and background, I was not always willing to suspend disbelief in details of this story, starting with Hock's lack of the proper anti-malarial protection to his handling of his personal effects. Speaking the local language does not always make for good communication and Hock exemplifies this aptly. While the name Malabo may have been a fictional name for the village, the novel is set clearly against the backdrop of the actual country and towns, with real people with diverse beliefs and behaviours ... Their lives in today's world are much more complex than is depicted here.
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The Lower River

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