The Lower River

I tend to lean toward writers that I like personally and that are genuinely good people - James Hall, Tim Dorsey, Carl Hiaasen, James Swain, Michael Connelly, Jeffrey Shaara, etc. I try to avoid those who I know to be or who are reputed to be churlish, arrogant, etc. like Paul Theroux. I mean, why put funds in the pockets of those who cannot bother to at least be civil to their fellow man?Sometimes, however, the talent overrides the deficits in personality and warrant a look at the work. I find Theroux to be a very talented writer but a bit uneven. I've enjoyed much of his travel related non-fiction but tend to find his fiction to be quite variable in quality. Still, he is a wordsmith of rare quality so when I came across this story I decided to give it a look.The theme is a common one. One reaches the golden years and remembers the glories of youthful days. In this case, as his life collapses around him - his wife discovers text messages to some of the women who shop at his men's clothing store on a cell phone she bought him. Said messages are more in the line of a friendly familiarity than of a lascivious nature but that doesn't seem to matter as the relationship ends in divorce, the daughter demands "her share" lest he start a new family and squeeze her out of her just rewards, his business is trapped in a downward spiral due to cheap imports and the move to casual dress styles.So, thinks he, when was he the happiest in his life? Why, the 4 years he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in Africa, where he built a school, started a medical clinic and developed a fascination with snakes. Well, dump his life, load up a satchel with money and head on back there for adulation and respect, a life of ease among the villagers.Naturally, a bit has changed in 40 years and it is the current state of the village that entraps him in many ways. The question hangs over the story as it unfolds, "What would you do? How? When?" Other questions related to the nature of life and man hang over the story as well.Certainly a worthy and entertaining read.

The Lower River explores the career and memory of a former Peace Corps volunteer returning to the small African nation where he worked as a young man. This is a subject Paul Theroux knows well as a former Peace Corps volunteer. In retrospect Theroux's narrator Ellis Hock (a stand in for Theroux ), had come to view his years in Africa in something of a golden light. After a series of disasters; a business failure, a marriage at an end, and a daughter demanding her inheritance prior to his death, he seeks solace and comfort that he once found in the small village of his Peace Corps years. The remainder of the novel conveys Ellis's gradual disillusionment and dismay. As the novel progresses Ellis finds there's no African Eden. The profound changes in the village since independence alarm him. Like many Peace Corps volunteers, Ellis probably never fully understood or comprehended "his village" or that the villagers had minds of their own, and that time, like the river, does not stand still. Like a number of other readers I was taken back by Throux's grim view of Africa and Africans, "They will eat your money and then they will eat you." Theroux is a gifted writer but this particular novel is bleak and the narrative unrelenting dark. For me the nightmarish scenes with Zizi and Ellis as he commands this young girl to dance, were the modern equivalent of Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness." In summary, The Lower RIver is a hard, difficult, and unrelentingly gloomy read. Sadly, this is one I cannot recommend to any but the most dedicated Theroux fans.

Paul Theroux the author can be as controversial as Paul Theroux the person. He is an accomplished writer and outspoken critic of misguided philanthropic overtures from the likes of Bono, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, whom he labels as "mythomaniacs" content on promoting their largess as a way of convincing the world of their worth. In a "New York Times" (2005) opinion piece, Theroux laments being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star In a cowboy hat (aka Bono); a figure who earns a place as a contemptuous look-a-like in Theroux's novel. He also exploits the detachment of the likes of billionaire Bill Gates (Bono being one of his trusted advisers) for his unproductive and insane idea to send computers to Africa when they need "pencils, paper, mops and brooms".Theroux's novel "The Lower River" chronicles in the abstract some of Theroux's experiences teaching in Africa. He does this through the exploits of the main character Ellis Hock who had taken a similar trek in life as part of the Peace Corps. Through Ellis Hock, Theroux visualizes "the school[s] where we taught 40 years ago are now in ruins - covered with graffiti, with broken windows, standing in tall grass. Money will not fix this." - For "[T]hey will eat your money and then they will eat you." And it is through this disillusionment that Ellis Hock will become captive to his past, figuratively and literally. Theroux's novel is fundamentally structured in two parts; the one being the story itself the other being Theroux's passion about the underlying destructiveness of misguided largess that reduced a people to be "changed, disillusioned, shabby, lazy, dependent, blaming, [and] selfish" a theme not lost in its similarities to current events in European countries like Spain, France and Greece today.The story in main is about one Ellis Hock; one of life's losers adrift in a world he can't seem to relate to; someone who sees his life having ended, facing a failed marriage, a failed business and a failure as a father and who now yearns for an earlier time when he was a teacher in Africa for the Peace Corps. Ellis returns to the place in Africa called the Lower River, where he once found happiness and contentment only to discover that all has changed. A witless Hock becomes a pawn and captive in the struggle for survival in a place he no longer understands and a place from which he cannot escape.Theroux's novel is a fascinating and engaging work. His characters of Ellis Hock and Sena tribal leader Menyanga are tuned to provide a spider and fly sort of plot that will keep the reader on edge right up to the final conclusion.I highly recommend you add this novel to your reading list and rate it "memorable".

Most of Theroux's more recent works tend to feature a version of the author himself as protagonist: a slightly knackered traveller who visits faraway places that once were joyous and pristine, and have now turned sour. The hero meets wicked people who exploit him as a meal ticket, and is often tempted by exotic young maidens who provide diversion and optimism. The Lower River fully conforms to this pattern, and is the masterpiece of a series that includes great works such as  Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town , The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific  and further back,  The Mosquito Coast . Buy and read this book, because it is one of Theroux's best.A former Peace Corps volunteer, disappointed with the breakdown of his family life and saddened by the decay of a nondescript inner city in America, returns to the Africa of his hopeful and distant youth. Looking to revisit a time in his life when his contribution to a tiny village had meant something, he finds his way back to the remote outpost but soon finds that time has moved on. Instead of being valued for his contribution, a more cynical attitude now prevails among the locals, and our hero soon finds himself struggling to survive, let alone rediscover his self-worth. The author is masterful in building an atmosphere of brooding menace, of wrongful sex, and bacterial materialism at the most simple level of civilisation. The writing is first-rate, the plot is a page-turner, and the local insights and observations are convincingly original and unique.I don't know whether Theroux's version of Malawi / Mocambique is accurate. I don't care to be honest. I was just caught up in this deliciously nightmarish story and couldn't put this one down. Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape TownThe Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the PacificThe Mosquito Coast

Ellis Hock spent most of his adult life working in a job he didn't particularly like, married to a wife he wasn't in love with, and became the father of a daughter who doesn't like him much. So at 60 he looks back and decides to try to return to the only place where he was truly happy - as a Peace Corps volunteer in a village called Malabo in Malawi.Hock had been happy and fulfilled in Malabo because he felt that by building a school and teaching willing pupils he was making the villagers' lives better. And he fell in love (though his beloved was promised to another and turned him down).But the return was not a success. The village was broken and diminished, people lived without ambition or hope. The school had become a ruin, and no-one now received any schooling. Hock is manipulated by Festus, the village chief, who wants nothing more than to extract from Hock all the money he had brought with him. He meets his former lover Gala, who has aged badly, and most of the villagers ignore or scorn him, except when they can get money from him on some lying pretext or other.Hock tries to get away, but without a mobile phone or any other means to communicate with anyone outside the village he is trapped. Festus won't let him go, and frustrates the attempts Hock makes to get away.The only redeeming feature is Zizi, a girl allocated to look after Hock, bring him food and do his laundry. She is like the Gala he knew 40 years earlier, and he becomes fascinated with her.On one of his attempted escapes Hock comes across a village occupied only by children, the parents of whom have died of Aids. On another occasion he is shown the location of Agence Anonyme, an aid agency which sometimes delivers food to the people of the area. The aid workers tell him to clear off, and won't help him, won't even deliver a message for him.Eventually Hock runs out of money, and becomes a burden to the village. Festus negotiates with some lads who plan to ransom Hock.......... I won't reveal the ending.I was told that this book was similar to The Mosquito Coast, which I believe to be one of the half-dozen best novels of the 20th century. Well, it's no Mosquito Coast. The dialogue - always worth reading in Theroux - is great early on, but less interesting during the Malabo incidents. Hock himself is an ordinary person (quite unlike Allie Fox), and so he's someone to whom things happen rather than an instigator. And the second half of the book is comparatively slow and a little repetitive. Hock's obsession with Zizi becomes a little wearing.Nevertheless there is a lot of good stuff in this book. The motif of snakes is well-handled, the python in Medford, the way Hock can impress and frighten the villagers through his confident handling of the snakes, the dance where Hock is shown with a snake creature. Festus resembles a snake in his cunning and cold-blooded ambition.When Hock becomes trapped in Malabo I was constantly reminded of Tony Last in Waugh's A Handful of Dust. At the end of Waugh's novel Last is seemingly doomed to spend the rest of his life in the depths of the Amazon jungle, reading the works of Dickens to a madman, who won't let him get away and who turns away anyone who comes looking for him.The village of children is like a grotesque caricature of the children's wedding party in Le Grand Meaulnes - but the apparent innocence is rapidly lost in this book.Theroux is no admirer of Aid Agencies. He calls the one in his book the Anonymous Agency, - possibly to avoid a law suit? I was reminded of the incident in Dark Star Safari where an Oxfam worker refuses to give Theroux a lift in one of their "spiffy white Land Rovers" - for insurance reasons, of all things.Hock is himself a metaphor for overseas aid to Africa. He comes with good intentions and plenty of money, but the result is to worsen the situation. The Africans don't want the "improvements" that the white man brings, they just want his money so they can continue to live their lives according to their own agendas. This message comes through in all Theroux's African novels and travel books.The character of Snowdon - is he epileptic. or is he a leper? - it isn't clear. He is ever-present in Malabo, always there with Zizi. Quite what his function is is not clear to me. But at the end he does Hock a significant service.Why does Zizi like Hock so much? She does a lot for him. perhaps she needs a father-figure....but she's not like a daughter to him.This book presents a gloomy aspect of modern Africa. I'd like to think there is a more cheerful side.

A return to the dark heart of Africa, this time it is a remote corner of Malawi rather than Conrad's Belgian Congo and our guide is the imperfect Hock rather than the enigmatic Marlowe. Returning to Malawi after the break up of his marriage in Medford, Mass. Elliott Hock carries with him the idealism and the misplaced romanticism that he still remembers from his original visit with the Peace Corps 40 years earlier. His return sees an inexorable unravelling of Hock's benign intentions, beset as he is by the remoteness of the village, the rapacious greed of the new village regime, the intense heat and his inability to stave off the ravages of malaria.Nothing is quite as it seems in this increasingly tense tale with the previously welcoming village slowly revealing that it has become hostile to westerners unless they provide a constant stream of money. Hock encounters a village of forgotten children straight out of 'Lord of the Flies' & his increasingly desperate attempts to escape grip the reader. I was reminded of the sheer terror of the national guardsmen in the disturibing film version of 'Southern Comfort'as Hock contemplates his complete isolation and the process of his mental disintegration begins. To say more would spoil a well-crafted conclusion. I recommend this tale not only as a profound contribution to the 'charity for Africa' debate but also as a convincing account of one man's journey to the heart of Africa and his subsequent realisation of what he is and how human nature can be corrupted.

I haven't read Theroux in years. Loved the Mosquito Coast but was disappointed in what followed. So glad I took a chance on his latest, it's a real return to form. The first chapter is brilliantly constructed, he builds sympathy for the hero with great subtlty and introduces a vital plot device. Why the hero disparages mobile phones. Without this the rest of the plot would not work. For me, the message of this book is not so much,"you can never go back", as what people become when they have no hope. I meant to keep this book by my bed and read a chapter or so at night, but ended up devouring it in 3 sittings. He repeats key points a bit too much, but then if I had pecked at it like I originally planned these reminders would have helped me keep up. Now going to review his back catalogie for any other great reads that I've missed.

Thes is a captivating novel in which a man, Ellis Hock, with his New York life in tatters, decides to revisit the Malawi he knew in his youth. But the place of his youth has gone, and been replaced by a far more threatening environment, in which Hock's life becomes ever more threatened.The supense of the novel builds and builds and it is very hard to stop reading. The characters are beautifully developed, and tension is wrung tighter with every page. A fantastic read, and a real eye opener about the realities of aid to Africa.Theroux always writes well, and this is definately one of his best.