A well imagined novel set in Brazil, where a son goes on a quest to discover a father who disappeared seventeen years previously. The three members of the expedition are so well drawn in their rivalry, and in their relation to Lucy, a young woman who is significant to all three.
The forest, rivers and natural obstacles are expertly given life in this book; praiseworthy in Pritchett, who imagined his setting before he visited it later in life.
The narrative is gripping and the action reliably done.

Years ago I read Pritchett's Collected Stories, which I loved although I don't usually "get" short stories. I hadn't realized he had written a novel, so when I saw this available for cheap on Kindle, I grabbed it. As a bonus, its plot revolves around Amazonian exploration, which I like reading about. Harry Johnson is the son of a missionary who disappeared into the jungle 17 years previously. He has had some previous experience of the Amazon when he and a friend set off upriver to join an older man on a planned exploration. While seeking an answer to what happened to his father was not the stated purpose of the exploration, that is what the expedition turns into.

Until I read my next book (see my review for [The Lost City of Z]), I thought Pritchett's descriptions of the hardships suffered by the explorers--the heat, the insects, the disease, the deprivations, the hostile Indians, etc.--were magnificent, and so very graphic. And they are good--in a "You are there!" kind of way. However, I found some of the plotting didn't make sense, particularly Harry's fear that he may have gotten his girlfriend back in England pregnant (she is the stepdaughter of the expedition leader), and his preoccupation with her failure to write him.

I'm not sure whether this book is in any way based on Percy Fawcett, the explorer who is featured in [The Lost City of Z], but after Fawcett's disappearance, Fawcett's surviving son (his older son disappeared with his father) launched an expedition to find him, and since this book was written in the 1930's I'm sure the Fawcett story at least influenced Pritchett.

However, if you only choose to read one book of Amazonian exploration, it shouldn't be this one--pick up [The Lost City of Z] instead ( )