Downriver (or, The Vessels of Wrath): A Narrative in Twelve Tales

A good book but quite a difficult read. The British author uses place names as if everyone should be familiar with them. Takes a little research to make it all make sense.

I'm not even going to pretend that I really know what this book was about, all I do know is that months after reading it, I cannot get the book out of my head. Here is what I do know: the book is about London, a seedy side of London, a side of London that Dickens wrote about, only Sinclair is writing about the 20th century version of that London. The language is updated and exponentitally more graphic, the characters participate in activities that Dickens characters could not conceive of, and the plot is more convoluted, if there actually is a plot, that is. The book is divided up into 12 sections, and at first I thought the sections were connected, then I realized they weren't, then I thought they were, and then I still thought they were, but only in ways I did not understand. I was confused, enthralled, intrigued, frustrated, and fascinated, and only when exhausted did I put the book down, turning each page in the hopes that the next page woud contain the answers to the multitude of questions every preceding page produced. One thing is not up for debate, though, and that is Sinclair's ability to write. Like Joyce, Pynchon, Foster Wallace, the highly underrated William Gaddis, Sinclair does what he wants with the English language and seems to do it with ease. At times dense, other times frivolous (not many, these other times), profane in a way that hints at sacredness, Sinclair challenges your every notion about what makes a good story, what makes a good book, what makes an interesting read. I do not read books twice- there are way too many out there to waste my time on the same one twice- but this one will be the exception to the rule. Challenging- without a doubt. Worth it- most definitely.

the revenesent raddish said rather much all that concerning this book must be said. the style is the largest problem, which is followed by the tales. a work shouldn't transport you; and there are a fine line between the succulent and overstuffed prose of Turkey. downriver a breaking loose bird is. record this- if some obscure work is constructed as above/below, being the great book nobody's never read of, it are of some critics who try to pull one of the left field simply to print another one for each other. (and they had probably never read it in any way, too much a disturbance)...never forget that the work for a reason was desperately incomprehensible. dumme Dichters.

Iain Sinclair is one of the masters of modern English prose, and he deserves to be much better known outside of Britain. If a writer's visibility were proportional to his sheer talent, Sinclair would have a profile as high as Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie, two other British writers with whom his talent is--at least--on a par."Downriver" takes us to Sinclair's familiar turf, the East End of London and eventully transports us all the way downriver to the mouth of the Thames, but the real geography mapped here is the one inside Iain Sinclair's head. This man's imagination is incredibly fertile, and it rarely flags. I would compare him to Pynchon, Grass, Kafka, even Garcia-Marquez. But I must also go further afield and compare him to Blake and Coleridge. One of his blurb writers calls Sinclair "a demented magus of the sentence." Now that I've read "Downriver," I understand exactly what that means.

Sinclair's book may just make Joyce seem only mildly difficult. I hope Sinclair had a good time writing this; perhaps I needed him to also write "Explaining Downriver".So, why did I give it 3 stars? The first star is for his ability to write. The second is in case my lack of understanding is due to my being lame rather than this story. And, the third is because the experience was interesting.

I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

This was the first 'big' book by Iain Sinclair, both in profile and length. There is some wonderful writing dotted about in it: the historic Tilbury and Maze Hill he conjures have a vivid strangeness familiar from his earlier poetry and prose, for example. But by god there's a lot of unfocused misanthropy here too. He hates everything, in the most hackneyed (ha!) terms: in the first 100 pages alone, there are cringe-worthy rants about alternative comedians, his (wonderful) previous books, people who take him to free dinners and give him fun jobs, the government, women who protest against the government, people who write articles criticising the government, people who went to the wrong universities, people who - like him - buy houses cheap in lovely squares recommended by John Betjeman, people who live in East London, people who don't live in East London, people who did live in East London and now don't, you.... I'm sitting there ready to join in but he never persuades me: they're all just bad cause he says so and that's that. He's not good at plot, satire, character, or structure in a work this length, but Downriver is still conventional enough in style (realism punctuated by historical visions) that it isn't really a formal experiment, or a Thomas Bernhard-style dynamic rant either. Beyond that it's difficult to put your finger on what's so "off" about the feel of the thing, considering its promising ingredients. The women who feature in his books tend to be dead and usually prostitutes, that probably doesn't help. And, while he's good at detailing the headspinning property cons going on by the riverside, he doesn't have much political insight beyond them - bit of a problem when you're presenting some kind of apocalyptic Thatcherite hell.

The book arrived swiftly and in great condition

Neither I nor anyone in my book-group liked this book, in fact I was the only one to finish it. I should explain that I downloaded the book so my husband, whose sight is not good could read it in enlarged type from my computer, I had the Penguin print copy. My husband read the first chapter and abandoned it. This was pretty well what the rest of the group did. I should say that there are ten of us and all have either a degree or a professional qualification, reasonably intelligent, well read people - all equally baffled. I realise the book has been well received and has won prizes but I think I can honestly say it is the only book that I have read and resented the time wasted in reading.

The actual story in each chapter is quite an illusive one, it has to be sought out. It is between a lot of "Sinclair to Savour". It cannot be rushed, skipped through, or immediately taken in. Even dipped into slowly, leaves one wanting to re-read and digest so many wordsmith delights. This makes getting to the end quite a slow but rewarding process. The story itself is well worth all the distractions, especially if, as I do, the reader savours Sinclair.

A remarkable evocation of East London seen through the eyes of the greatest set of unlikely characters since J P Dunleavy's "Ginger Man". The language is rich in description and metaphor and 'though the action can be a trifle difficult to follow the total experience is greatly rewarding.