The Lower River by Paul Theroux

The reader should not be fooled by how this book starts out. We are presented with an aging shop owner in Medford, Massachusetts. One day he wakes up to find fears no longer satisfied with his life. Perhaps he was never satisfied with his life except for his time in Africa. After divorcing his wife, he finds he has no more business in his hometown and makes the adventuresome and perhaps foolhardy decision to return to Malawi, Africa where he had been the happiest.

Once there, in the hot, dusty village on the Mozambique border, he was greeted by all the memories, all the warmth he had yearned for back in Massachusetts. He also realized that 40 years makes a big difference, even in Africa, and things were not the same as they used to be, to put it mildly. But then again, is a return to a far-off place where you once lived or visited long ago ever as good as the first few steps you took there?

Hotch strikes me as quixotic in both senses of the word: He is quirky and bizarre in his endeavor, and he is much akin to Don Quixote, because he is seeking improbable adventures at an age when most men are contemplating retirement or at least a comfortable and mild existence. It is interesting to note that Paul Theroux himself is very much present in this novel. He was in the Peace Corps in Nyasaland, now Malawi, back in the 60s. He is also a Massachusetts native and approximately the same age as this book's main character.

I would like to share a quote from the book that kept me pondering (and agreeing) four days: "Being illiterate, not speaking a language well, out of your element and perhaps feeling insecure, unnerved, and suspicious — all of these made a person much more observant". I have seen these qualities in action. This is just one example of Theroux's poignancy and simple yet effective powers of observation. I wish more the people viewed the world as he does.