Rapids: A Novel - Hardcover

Parks, Tim

3.33

122 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559708115 ISBN 13: 9781559708111

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2006

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Gathering for a kayaking vacation in the Italian Alps, six adults and nine teenagers under the leadership of the enigmatic Clive and his fragile girlfriend, Michela, experience unexpected hazards that threaten their lives. By the author of Europa. 12,500 first printing.

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About the Author:

AUTHORBIO: Tim Parks is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Booker Prize finalist Europa, Destiny, and A Season with Verona. He lives in Verona, Italy, with his wife and three children.

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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