Tim Parks's latest novel opens in the forests of the South Tyrol, where a group of white-water enthusiasts are taking a kayaking holiday. The river is overflowing with melt water from a thawing glacier, and the kayakers find themselves endangered by the force of the current, as the river runs ever faster and fuller. It's a symbolic river, too: Parks explores the ripples of minor social dramas experienced by a group of semi-strangers; the undercurrent of their memories, their past unhappinesses; and the crashing waves of environmental apocalypse.

LRB 5 May 2005 | PDF Download