The Lower River

The Lower River (2012) by Paul Theroux. Ellis Hock, a retirement-age man who used to run a menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts, is divorced by his shrewlike wife and ignored by his acquisitive daughter; so he decides to take a trip back to his past, to a happier time, to his days with the Peace Corps in Malawi. He travels back to Africa, and makes the journey down to the lower river where he lived and worked for four years, and finds that things have gone horribly wrong. The Eden that he remembers has degenerated into a poverty-stricken hell inhabited by apathetic tribes people who value him only for the money he brings with him. This novel is quite convincing in setting the scene and immersing the reader in the culture that Hock encounters upon arriving at the lower river. The only problem I had with it is that it was tremendously depressing to read about. This is a good-quality book, but I really did not enjoy it. Only at the very end, in the last two pages, is it redeemed, and I found that this was not enough for me. Would I ever want to reread this book? No. Grade: B-