Water Music

Revolving around the expeditions of Mungo Park, T. Coraghessan Boyle's novel Water Music is not easy to categorize; it is a travel account, picaresque and novel of manners rolled into one.In 1795 the Scotsman Mungo Park (1771-1806) went to Africa to explore the Niger, a river no European had ever seen. Upon arriving in present-day Gambia, he went 200 miles up the Gambia River to the trading station at Pisania and then traveled east into unexplored territory. In 1796 he reached the Niger River at the town of Segu and traveled 80 miles downstream before his supplies were exhausted and he had to turn back. He returned to Africa in 1805, intending to explore the Niger from Segu to its mouth. His expedition was attacked at Bussa, and Park was drowned. Dedicating the book to the (fictive) Raconteurs' Club, master storyteller T.C. Boyle has concocted an ingenious narrative. At first he spins numerous strands, weaving them into an intricate exotic literary tapestry, as the tale progresses. In fact, the 104 chapters can be read as short stories in their own right. Their titles are sometimes alluding to literary masterpieces by such figures as Ivan Turgeniev, Joseph Conrad and Langston Hughes.Boyle's story starts in the year 1795. Mungo Park is held hostage by Ali Ibn Fatoudi, the Emir of Ludamar, one of the inland Muslim principalities in what is now the Sahel. A protégé Joseph Banks, erstwhile companion of Captain Cook on his circumnavigation of the globe and now President of the Royal Society and Director of the African Association for Promoting Exploration, Park, a former surgeon on an East India merchantman, has been selected to lead the first expedition in search of the river Niger.Mungo's guide and interpreter is the intriguing Johnson a.k.a. Katunga Oyo. The early biography of this Madingo is reminiscent of the adventures of a character from Maryse Conde. Kidnapped and sold into slavery Katunga Oyo is shipped to a plantation in England's new world colony of South Carolina. After a visit to his overseas possessions the landowner takes him to London. Here Johnson, as he is now called, learns to read and write, and develops a passion for literature, becoming a "true-blue African homme des lettres". After killing a man in a duel, Johnson ends up back in Africa. Here he "melted into the black bank of the jungle". Johnson's idiom is full of - often humorous - anachronisms. He is calling the local cuisine "soul food" and his old plantation songs "the blues". He is capable of self-mockery: "Don't look at me, brother. I'm an animist." Sometimes he sounds like a 18th century Muddy Waters. Oscillating between his African heritage and newly acquired European culture, he manages to graft the latter upon his African roots. Johnson becomes a shaman of sorts: At the behest of his former master, who happens to be a member of Sir Joseph's Association, Johnson agrees to join Mungo Park's 1795 expedition. His price: the complete works of William Sh

Boyle, one of my favorite authors, is a black-humored satirist. His books are usually based on historical events and people, but that's where the reality usually ends. Water Music is ostensibly about the "discovery" of the Niger River by a Scotsman named Mungo Park in the late 1700s. In actuality, the book follows the parallel lives of the fictional "Ned Rise", a Dickensian sort of sleazebag and smalltime thief, and Mungo Park, a renaissance man of sorts whose travels and yearnings take him back and forth from Africa to Europe more regularly than his family wishes. The book, arranged in blocks of flashbacks and essays rather than formal chapters, is sprinkled with all of the other quirky historical events that occurred at the time of this story. Boyle, whose short fictions I have also enjoyed in The New Yorker, tells a story that reaches all of the senses, and his books are a mess of smells, tastes, sights, and sounds, not to mention an open door on the raw sexual and animal side of humankind. Like Roahl Dahl (author of such children's stories as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach), Boyle's protagonists always seem to end up where and how they should, the bastard always seems to get what he deserves... which is rich and satisfying for as emotional a reader as I am. i always have 3-4 copies on my shelves to give out to friends who haven't read it.

TC Boyle challenges the reader to "hold on" through the chapters as you race along the rivers and lives of this story. I was enchanted, humored. frightened, anxious and enriched with this experience. Not only did I burn out quite a few flashlight batteries reading late into the night trying not to disturb my husband, but realized I needed to find a more advanced dictionary/thesaurus to keep up with Mr. Boyle's remarkable command of vocabulary. Great fun!

I started reading this book without knowing anything about it. "An adventure novel", I thougt, not very enthusiastic. But, it turned out to be the best piece of literature ever come across my hands. It is incredibly funny, sarcastic and sad. And, the descriptions are so brilliant, the metaphores so good, that I could almost hear, smell and feel Africa. I love humor, when you have to go a little bit deeper and find it in between the lines. I think this is the book that made me laugh the most and made me want to read more and more and more.

When I'd finished reading Water Music I turned the book over and read it again. It is the only book I have ever read twice without a break in between. The narrative is like nectar - to be swished around the tastebuds and savoured page by delectable page.