The prose both enhances the contemplative air of their trip and underscores the river's isolation. By starting the novel so removed from the protagonists, Heller makes them seem especially vulnerable to the elements. Initially, the third person point-of-view focuses on Jack and Wynn's surroundings, the vast Canadian wilderness pages of description occur before either character is named. Heller's narration shifts in intensity, one moment supremely focused on his characters, the next at a distance from them. What starts off as a fun-filled retreat into nature becomes a race against time that pits them against the very river they meant to savor. Even worse, while paddling through the fog, they overhear a heated argument between a husband and wife camped on the riverside, only to find a man paddling alone the next day. Despite their strong wilderness skills, their adventure is put to the test when they discover a massive forest fire threatens to overtake them. They've agreed to take a semester off from school in order to maximize time on the river, and for the most authentic adventure possible, they do not bring a satellite phone.

Jack and Wynn are college friends on a canoeing trip down the Maskwa River in Northern Canada. But none of that really affects the utter joy contained in this book, which is a suspenseful tale told with glorious drama and lyrical flair.Introspective and emotionally-resonant, Peter Heller takes readers through a struggle for physical survival that shifts into a meditation on morality. This social positioning tempers the peril a little, making the boys seem like adventure-tourists who could have done something else with their academic sabbaticals.

There is a tendency toward status-flagging in this novel. He brilliantly describes the physical process of wild living. has an extraordinary facility for describing topography and vegetation we can feel the sharpness of the rocks and the trilling excitement of the river as it approaches rapids. The River is a fiction addition to the New Landscape writing of Robert Macfarlane and Rebecca Solnit, prose so vivid and engaging that a city-dwelling reviewer can feel the clammy cold of a fog over a river or the heat of subterranean tree roots burning underfoot in the aftermath of a fire. Initially reads as slightly puritanical - drunks are bad, fat people are dumb, Jack and Wynn are handsome and good at everything - but this tendency reverses so completely and shockingly at the end that it can almost, but not quite, knock any smugness from a reader.

The river heller review