Reviews for Slowly down the Ganges

The average rating for Slowly down the Ganges based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-04-08 00:00:00 Bruce Clayton I have read only the terrible introduction, followed by the reading of a list of 108 names for the river and four chapters. Maybe I am edgy. Maybe I have a short temper, but I cannot take any more of this. I don't like the prose style. I presume the lines are supposed to be funny. I am not laughing and I'm bored stiff. In addition, the audiobook narration by James Bryce is a pain to listen to. He mumbles.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-18 00:00:00 Vincent Lapi It has finally come to my attention that Eric Newby is reputed to be a humorist, representative of the stiff upper lip clan of droll understatement and inane comparisons. In fact, if you find ineptness and poor timing rather laughable, Slowly down the Ganges starts out rather hilariously and gives new meaning to the word slow. A lot of the book is taken up with the Newbys search for a boat. Loaded down with two tin trunks,valises and baskets, far more than they could carry, Newby and his feisty wife seem spectacularly unprepared for the journey. After all, one would assume that anyone planning a river expedition would have their own, even if rented or borrowed, boat. Newby seems particulay disingenious in relying on others to provide timely assistance. Once they are en route, however, both he and Wanda pitch in, hauling, slogging through mud and dust, encouraging and actually bonding with their native boatmen, a succession of them that they hired along with the boats. There are some marvelous pictures and we get names and a feel for the kind of encounters the situation throws at them. I was pleased to note that Newby had overcome as best he could, his distance from his surroundings, even going to the extent of learning some of the languge and striking off on his own occassionally. Typically, Wanda got to do all of the cooking Newby is also particularly good, when he bothers, at description and historical anecdote. It's a pity that he feels the need to make so many insipid comparisons with his British Islands, I suppose he felt very strange, to be bumbling along the Ganges with his wife. After patiently following them the whole way, I found the ending dissappointing. Their nick of time rendevous in Calcutta is rather anticlimactic and the bewidering slew of detail regarding the last stage of their journey seems tacked on. At the end of the day, before I put the book back on the shelf, I feel rather fond, stirred but not rapturous.