The Lower River

• Author: Paul Theroux
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: May 22, 2012
• Publisher: Clipper Books

Ellis Hock runs a menswear store in Massachusetts but still dreams of the four years he spent in Malawi. When his wife leaves him, he realises that there is one place for him to go: back to Malawi on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again. Arriving at the dusty village he finds it transformed, but the locals remember him and welcome him back. Is his new life an escape or a trap?

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

Some countries are more difficult to find translated literature from, since I rely on what my public library system has available. So when I saw this book set in Malawi, I jumped on the chance to learn more about this African nation through this story. When I did check this out of the library, I only saw the title as The Lower River and not the second half which I found on Amazon: A Riveting Literary Thriller—Peace Corps Dream Becomes African Nightmare of Survival. I might have given this a second thought if I had seen that part.

Theroux does have an incredible talent for creating such vivid scenes that I had no problem visualizing myself in this remote part of Malawi on the Lower River right next to Hock. The physical setting is so integral to this story, that it felt as though this story wouldn’t work set anywhere else. I found it fascinating to see what life is like in such a far corner of the world from my own limited experience of having been to only a few different countries so far.

The story focuses on Ellis Hock, a man who spent four years in a small village in Malawi with the Peace Corps. They built a school, a church, and worked to improve the lives of the residents, and for Hock, it was the best four years of his life. Afterwards, he returns to his regular life in Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter, and the clothing store he runs. More than 40 years have passed, and his life falls apart like a bad country song. His wife leaves him, his daughter is awful to him, and there isn’t anything meaningful left in his life, so he plans a return to the tiny village he got to know all those decades ago.

Except the Malawi Hock left as a young man is not the same as the Malawi he lands in at 62 years old. Hock struck me as someone who doesn’t put a lot of thought into his actions, and it made him kind of difficult for me to really like and fully empathize with. He’s also gullible and prone to self-deception, refusing to see what is right in front of him. It isn’t hard to see what might occur down the line, so there weren’t many plot twists in the story that I couldn’t see coming. There was an aspect of the story that gave me the ick—there’s a weird fetishization of a 16-year old girl who lives in the village, Zizi, and 62-year-old Hock. It was really uncomfortable reading these parts of the book, and it made me view Hock even less favorably than I had already.

That wasn’t the only ick that occurred in the story, and this one was a bigger one. There’s a thread of racist tropes and white paternalism throughout the story, and while Hock originally had gone to Malawi with the Peace Corps for to genuinely help people, that is no longer the case when he returns. When Hock returns to Malawi, it is because he has become convinced that the only place he can feel happiness again is in that tiny village in Malawi. So he heads off with a good amount of money and doesn’t even have anyone to tell about his travel plans. I’m sure you can already see the disaster in the making, especially with such a trusting and gullible person. The village of Hock’s dreams has become a disaster—the school and the church are destroyed, and the people have changed. Instead of finding happiness, he finds people who have become dependent on humanitarian aid and are looking to see what they can get from anyone who comes to visit.

There’s a reliance on tropes that give this book somewhat of a Heart of Darkness tone, with savage and violent Africans, feral children, and the white saviors who offer salvation in the form of food aid. The vast majority of the African characters are portrayed negatively, and there were only two characters who were seen through a more positive lens while still not providing great representation. There’s an older woman who Hock had a relationship with when he was there as a young man, and Gala becomes the voice of reason in the story. She’s intelligent and clear-eyed, and gives Hock the obvious warning ‘they will eat your money and then they will eat you.’ The other positive portrayal of an African is in the character of Zizi, who is assigned to be Hock’s caretaker. She isn’t given much agency to be her own person, always catering to Hock, and ultimately she’s used as a pawn to hurt Hock. 

Overall, this wasn’t my favorite book dealing with post-colonial life in various African countries, but instead it was a character-driven meander through Hock’s loss of a delusion about Malawi and the nature of happiness. It was kind of a depressing read, and the second half of the book was a bit repetitive and slow-moving, and could have easily been a much shorter read. But seeing as how the tropes so heavily used in this story portray the Black characters overwhelmingly negative, and a lot of what occurred was so predictable for me, I can’t say this was an enjoyable read, although it did portray the country really well and provided for a somewhat atmospheric read.

Bottom line: Vivid and atmospheric portrayal of the scenery in Malawi, but leans heavily into negative tropes about Africans and white paternalism.

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