Review: Millard, River of Doubt

[truepenny]

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


[library]
[audiobook]

I don't know about this one. I listened to it with great attention (the reader is excellent), and I enjoyed it, but when it was over, I was left feeling sort of meh? about it. Millard has certainly done her research, and she has a good prose style. I can't tell if it's that she killed her own efforts at suspense (quoting from Roosevelt's post-expedition accounts makes it quite clear that he survived, no matter how dramatically you describe his near-death state) or if it's just that there isn't very much story here: Roosevelt and a Brazilian explorer descend a hitherto uncharted river in the hostile heart of the Amazon. All but three of their company make it out alive--one drowning, one murder, and the murderer who fled into the jungle and was presumably killed by something or someone in very quick order. There's a lot of individual events that are quite exciting, in various ways, but there's no real throughline, and I can't quite put my finger on why. (I found the bits set in New York much more vivid and compelling than the bits set in Brazil, and I'm not sure why that is, either, except possibly that where Millard really excels is in writing the history of complicated and sophisticated human interactions, and the thing that this expedition stripped right out of everybody was complexity and sophistication.)

In any event, if you're interested in Theodore Roosevelt or the history of the exploration of the Amazon, this is well worth checking out, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it more generally.

Three stars? Four stars? I'm going to give it four, but that's for the way she writes the set-up and denouement, not the expedition that is the point of the book.



View all my reviews

Comments

[sovay]

There's a lot of individual events that are quite exciting, in various ways, but there's no real throughline, and I can't quite put my finger on why.

Is it especially important to the story that it was Roosevelt on this particular expedition, or would things have gone as they did with anyone?

[truepenny]

It has to be Roosevelt. The expedition was explicitly put together for him.