The Riverbones: Stumbling After Eden in the Jungles of Suriname

by Andrew Westoll

Book Overview

A young man uncovers myth, history, and murder while searching for the soul of an unknown and magical place.Andrew Westoll spent a year living the dream of every aspiring primatologist: following wild... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771088752
• ISBN13: 9780771088759
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Emblem Editions
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Beyond Rumours

This book is recognizably one of a genre - the author has evidently taken his pattern from the books of famous `travel' writers including Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin, whose works he mentions in passing. That being said, it is a good read - certainly the best in English about Suriname - which touches on most of the key social and economic issues in the country today. Apart from a few minor inaccuracies - such as stating that `bami kip' (a Javanese dish) is the Hindustani staple (which is `roti kip') and that the red material of which the unpaved laterite roads are made is bauxite (a whitish substance) - the book has two main faults. First, it suffers from the notion that by `roughing it' one can get a much more authentic picture of a country than the usual tourist. This book disproves the assumption that a view of a society from the bottom up is any less skewed than a view from the top down. Despite mentioning one of them (Annette) by name, the author doesn't seem to have met any of the well educated, highly competent, multi-racial Surinamese professionals working for the Government and NGOs. In fact, apart from the Maroons and Amerindians with whom he spent time in the jungle, he seems to have socialized mainly with white outsiders - Peace Corps volunteers, Dutch investors and students. From the North American perspective, one of the great things about Suriname is that (at least in Paramaribo where the vast majority of the population lives) virtually everyone - even a vagrant I encountered - is fluent in English. You wouldn't think so from this book. Secondly, although this is not a frivolous book - the author goes well beyond Rumours (a hotel bar in Paramaribo), travelling off the beat track in Suriname, and is familiar with a lot of literature about the country, including the books of Steadman, Walsh and Price - the author insists on sharing with the reader all his human frailties, recounting every time he gets drunk, uses dope or goes to a brothel. Evidently, he is the type of Canadian who, having been rigorously sheltered from alcohol consumption during youth, cannot have a drink without ending up drunk. Perhaps this is done to lend authenticity to the narrative; but, while his personal angst is understandably important to him, it adds nothing of interest to the book from the reader's viewpoint.