Blood River

March 1, 2008

The ninth Richard and Judy’s bookclub read this year is Blood River by Tim  Butcher, the only non-fiction book in the list. The book recounts the author’s journey along the seemingly impassable Congo, as he retraced the footsteps of his Telegraph journalist predecessor, Henry Stanley (as in “Livingstone I presume?” Stanley).

In the time between Stanley’s navigation of the length of the Congo and Butcher’s trip a little over a century later the Congo had changed from an African tribal country, to a Belgian colony where tourists could regularly take trips down the Congo and there were towns and cities with transport networks and schools and hospitals, to a state of violent disrepair, anarchy and dictatorship where it would be unthinkable for anyone to travel down the river. Facing the threat of disease, the breakdown of the transport networks and hostile warring tribes, Butcher dependent on the help of aid workers, locals and the UN travelled by motorbike, dug out and boat through a country he described as the only place on earth that was not only undeveloped but undeveloping as the infrastructure of the old (barbaric) colonial rule crumbled into the tropical humidity, with the local people expending all their energy just to stay alive amidst the countless warring factions, the idea of progress was too much. Butcher described how in a country rich with rainfall and fertile soil, it’s people were in such a precarious state that all they could grow was cassava, a nutritionally poor plant and everyone was becoming malnourished, it was a very sad story.

Part travel-log, part history lesson, part lesson on African politics, Blood River is a very interesting book highlighting an area that is too complex to understand just from the occasional 5 minute news segment, I can only wish the people of that country luck.

So where do I put this book in my personal ‘best of Richard and Judy’ list? It’s difficult because it’s comparing non-fiction with fiction, but it does bare some similarities to some of the more epic war related stories on the list like The Rose of Sebastopol and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Reading Blood River has also made me want to read some of the fictional accounts of the Congo, Butcher recommended, particularly Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Greene’s A Burnt Out Case and Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Anyway here’s the updated list (this was hard, as I did enjoy this book but it has some steep competition);

1. A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory – every page grips you, scares you and tears at your heart.
2. The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon – a very close second, it is deeply and beautifully researched invoking the sites, sounds and smells of the Crimean War.
3. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones – a lovely little story of bravery and island life, let down in my opinion by it’s final 20 pages.
4. Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann – the description of the journey across Siberia is epic
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini – a very vivid description of life at a terrible period of time in Afghanistan’s history.
6. Blood River by Tim Butcher
7. Notes from an exhibition by Patrick Gale – just not my sought of book, far too ‘cosy’.
8. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – argh this is hard, I liked this book but Notes from an exhibition was more flawlessly written in my opinion.
9. The Visible World by Mark Slouka – I’m sorry, but for me this book dragged.

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