Michael Green

Freelance Journalist

  • Home
  • About
  • Features
  • Book
  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS

Book review: The Riverbones, by Andrew Westoll

In The Big Issue on July 27, 2009

After finishing university, Andrew Westoll studied monkeys in Suriname. Five years later, he returned to the tiny South American nation – this time as a writer.

In The Riverbones, the young Canadian careens from one disturbing encounter to the next, boozing his way through jungles and seedy towns on a search for personal meaning and cultural understanding. While he’s at it, he illuminates the country’s brutal colonial exploitation, as well as its ongoing crises in health, governance and environmental management.

In the book’s defining quest, Westoll seeks a glimpse of okopipi, an endangered electric-blue frog. The Suriname government, attempting to protect the frog’s fragile habitat from tourism, denies him a travel permit.

But he doesn’t give up. At best, he’s pursuing a romantic folly; at worst, he’s just another moneyed westerner extracting his bounty from the jungle (much like the multinational mining corporations he criticises).

Even still, Westoll is a rollicking storyteller who knows his subject back to front. The Riverbones is an unsettling evocation of all that’s rotting and thriving in Suriname, and it resonates far beyond the rainforest. 

Four stars

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Articles

    • ▼Features
      • ►Environment
      • ►Architecture and building
      • ►Social justice
      • ►Community development
      • ►The Age
      • ▼The Big Issue
        • An enterprising lot
        • Dee and Rob
        • Cracks in the walls
        • Martin Schoeller: Close-Up
        • Down to earth
        • Asylum
        • Book review: The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel
        • Lives in the balance
        • Towns in Transition
        • The biggest catch
        • Book review: The Riverbones, by Andrew Westoll
        • Book review: The Red Highway, by Nicolas Rothwell
        • Book review: The Best Australian Political Writing 2009, edited by Eric Beecher
        • Life saving
        • Book review: Forecast, by Stephan Faris
        • The money pit
        • On Cue
        • The lambs in winter
        • Cafe Nostalgia
      • ►Arts
      • ►Nature Climate Change
      • ►Nature Energy
      • ►Overland Journal
    • ►Greener Homes
    • ►Blog

Recent Articles

  • She Called Me Red
  • how are you today
  • Keeping it real
  • No Exit
  • Faces of the Rohingya
  • Contested territory

Topics

  • Articles (390)
    • Features (151)
      • Environment (81)
      • Architecture and building (39)
      • Social justice (50)
      • Community development (38)
      • The Age (74)
      • The Big Issue (19)
      • Arts (12)
      • Nature Climate Change (1)
      • Nature Energy (1)
      • Overland Journal (1)
    • Greener Homes (180)
    • Blog (60)
Tweets by @michaelbgreen

© Copyright 2017 Michael Green · All Rights Reserved