I read as far as I'm going to. The start showed so much promise, a sense of nostalgia so relateable. But I wasn't willing to go farther into the darkness.

The Lower River by Paul Theroux is a story of longing and a desire to recapture the past. Forty years ago, Ellis Hock spent four years in the African country of Malawi with the Peace Corps. They were the happiest years of his life. He was called back to the United States when his father died, and he took over the successful family business selling menswear.

When his wife discovers his online flirtations with some of his female customers, she leaves him, and he finds himself thinking more and more about Africa. He feels he has just been marking time since he left Malawi. Hock was known as the Snake Man in his village in Malawi. An acquaintance has a friend with a python. The acquaintance calls Ellis for advice on the snake.

“She wants to know why the snake is acting weird. It still isn’t eating. It lies beside her, flattening itself.”

“Did you say flattening itself?” Hock said. “Listen, get her on the phone. Tell her to put the snake in a cage immediately.”

“Why are you shouting?”

Only then had Hock realized that his voice had risen almost to a scream. In this same shrill pitch he said, “The snake is measuring her. It’s getting ready to eat her!”

As his memories of Africa resurface, Hock decides to return to Malawi and the Lower River. But many things have changed in 40 years, and his trip takes a dangerous turn.

It is obvious the author knows his subject well. Theroux was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi many years ago and has since returned. The descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of Africa are authentic. The characters seem like real people, and the dialog rings true.

This is a grim and fascinating book with true moments of terror. It probably deserves more than three stars but I just didn't enjoy it very much. If you are interested in well written fiction, Africa, and traveling vicariously, I recommend The Lower River.

A fantastic book on so many levels,being social,cultural and economic. Part "Lord of the flies" with an excursion into the continuing Aids crisis. Part indictment of the international aid organizations and their ultimate impotency. Part journey into the pain of love and loss and the trials of growing old.A treatise on the probable inability to relive the past no matter how beautiful the original experience. This is a book to smell and feel Africa and at the same time experience the differing viewpoints of the rich and the poor, the fed and the hungry, the traveler and the resident, and the huge clash of 1st and 3rd world outlooks. 5 star book!

A rather disturbing book showing the effect of utter poverty, disease and hopelessness on man's humanity to man.

This was a great random find at the library. It's an unusual story of finding one's self in that Ellis, a man in his 60 s returns to the village where he was in the peace corps. He has lost everything, his business, his wife, and seeks the memory of the only place he felt truly alive in Malawi. The author writes of that sense of longing so brilliantly and really captures the allure Africa holds on your heart even years after you've left. However the memory quickly fades into a struggling bush village that presents its own set of troubles in the modern world and leaves Ellis feeling lost no matter where he finds himself at. A really awesome read that makes some great commentary on the absurdity of foreign aid missions and what actual life is like for people struggling in a remote area.

Lower River was Conversati-ohm's (one of my monthly book clubs) August pick. We had a robust discussion about it even though not everyone liked it. I had mixed feelings about it myself. I didn't care for most of the characters and that made it hard to like the book overall. Ellis is so selfish and self-righteous that I couldn't bring myself to have any sympathy for him when his trip to Malawi didn't go as planned. At one point, he needs a letter delivered and something extremely awful happens to the deliverer. When Ellis goes to see the person who was supposed to deliver the letter after the awful thing happens, all he can ask about is whether the awful thing happened before the letter got to its destination. That scene literally made me sick to my stomach.

However, Ellis's selfishness did make me think a lot about Westerners coming to "help" people in third-world countries. What is the true motivation for helping? Is everyone helping out of the goodness of their hearts or because of the feelings of superiority one might get from helping? Are we giving them the help they need or the help WE THINK they need?

Even though I didn't really enjoy reading this book, it did end up being a good book for discussion purposes and one that I thought about for a while after I finished it.

Second reading: much the same, still good.

A small allegory of hopelessness, troubling, worrying and despairing. There is perhaps one tiny gleam of hope in it somewhere.

Technically, I admire the descriptions and the use of snakes. I can't agree with those who think this reduces Africans (or Americans) to stereotypes: but the characters are representative, for sure. His bottom line seems to be that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, and cette chose was never a very healthy thing.

If you were nitpicking you might say that his view of development in Africa is a little behind the times, missing such aspects as Turkey in Somalia and China in the DRC, but that's how you would write a textbook, not a novel.

I think there are aspects of Nabokov in Theroux, but really he's Greene. Perhaps not innovative, but pretty bloody devastating.

dark, and darker

I couldn't put it down! Except to go swimming!