Rapids - Hardcover

Tim Parks

3.33

122 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436205599 ISBN 13: 9780436205590

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, 2005

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A riveting white-water ride down a raging river in the Italian Alps, pitting people against Nature.

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About the Author:

Tim Parks is the author of more than twenty novels and works of nonfiction, including the best-selling Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education. His novels include Europa which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His essays have appeared in the The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, for which he blogs. Tim Park is also a renowned translator. He lives in Italy.

From Publishers Weekly:

Parks, whose Europa was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, sets his highly engrossing novel on a swollen, swift-moving river in the Italian Alps, where 13 Brits from a London kayak club have come to run the rapids. Vince, a timid, middle-aged banker, recently widowed, serves as the story's center and worries that he won't be able to keep up with the group. He has good reason: Clive, the guide, is a fierce environmentalist and veteran of antiglobalization demonstrations whose frustration with peaceful protests coupled with his shock over the death of two fellow demonstrators leads him to consider—with ominous undertones—doing "something bigger" for the cause. In Clive's wake is Michela, a young Italian whose clinging, worshipful love of Clive renders her increasingly unstable as the trip progresses. Parks keeps the kayaking scenes lively, and he nails the strange hierarchical culture of group trips—and their possibility for implosion. It's part of what transforms Vince, who begins by ruminating over his wife's cryptic last words ("I'm so, so sorry"), but who, over the course of the trip, loses himself in the immediacy of the rushing river, and in Michela, with whom he forges a peculiar bond. It's an urgent, thoughtful and convincing portrayal. (May)
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