Customer Reviews

The River Queen

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mary Morris' father lived to the age of 102. He was many things during his long life; dandy, ladies man, business man, developer, husband and father. He also left strong memories in his daughter of his uncontrollable and unreasonable rages that he took out on whatever family member happened to be near. A portion of his life, but by no means all of it, was spent in small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River. Mary hires a houseboat, and sets off on a journey down the river to try and reconcile her grief, ambivalent feelings, and understand her father's roots better. Sounds like a fascinating journey. The trip down the river is an adventure in itself, encountering hurricanes, hazardous currents, and busy shipping channels that make navigating the houseboat a serious undertaking. Ms Morris writes well. The story flows, and the transit between musings on her memories and telling the story of her river journey is smooth and not jarring. It is a well written book. However, the story both of the river trip and her father seemed superficial to me. She tells mostly of everyday occurrences; who cooks dinner, where they eat on the boat, and the never-ending quest for a hot shower. The towns they visit are only given sketchy portrayal. She mostly doesn't care for the people they meet, and gives them a wide, therefore un-insightful berth. Her father's life lives within the same boundaries her memory supplied before the trip. She finds no insight, does not experience either elation, grief, or camaraderie of his memory by being on the river. A good travel book can be engrossing. A good book of exploration of familial ties can be enlightening. I was neither engrossed, nor enlightened, but I was also not bored to the point of giving up. I read the book waiting for the "other shoe to fall", and it never does. Nor will I take any memories from this book as I lead my life. I read it, it's done. Reading this book is like holding a handful of Mississippi river water; it trickles between your fingers, then it's gone.

I grew up in the same town Mary Morris's father lived near many decades earlier. Her discovery of the mystic nature of the River (as the Mississippi is simply called), her quest to discover the roots she distanced herself from as an adult, and her dead-on description of the small towns all along that River, struck a chord deep within me.

Mark Twain, of course, best gives voice to the mystical, magical nature of the Mississippi River, but Mary discovers in the 21st century that the very real spirit of the River still lives not only in her crew but also deep within her.

Mary also explores her feelings about her recently deceased father; by the end of her journey, she has discovered as much about herself as about the places her father lived as a young man.

And Mary's descriptions of the small River towns paint a perfect picture of communities turning their municipal backs on the River, the highway that made their very existence possible, and turning instead to the same suburban malls and suburban sprawl that one can find everywhere in America.

I commend this book to anyone who thinks about their family roots, to anyone who wonders if Twain's River exists anymore (it does), and to anyone who wonders where we came from as a nation of unique small towns to an America of numbing sameness.

In her memoir, The River Queen, Mary Morris takes her readers on a unique journey down the mighty Mississippi as she makes a private journey of her own--coming to terms with her father's passing. Her naïveté is refreshing, and she admits early in the book, "I don't have the river in my head, yet." Unlike the writer's friend, who never thought about the river despite growing up in St. Louis, I grew up twenty miles southeast of St. Louis, and the river has been a large presence in my life. Like many Midwesterners, I have traveled the river and visited some of the places Morris describes. By the book's end, Morris has changed. She has learned things about her father's life and about herself, contentment evident as she pilots the last leg of her journey with the river firmly fixed in her head. I agree with T.S. Eliot, "The sea is around us, but the river is in us." Reading Morris's memoir will put a little of the river in every reader.

Although I had heard of Mary Morris, I had never read any of her books. The River Queen is excellent, and her other books are now on my "to read" list.

The author decides to travel down part of the Mississippi on a houseboat, and she takes us on the ride with her. It is interesting (and humourous) to learn about the Mississippi river, and all the small towns and characters she meets along the way. The book is also about her father, who passed away at the age of 102.

Ms. Morris manages to intertwine, very successfully, the story of the river and of her father.

The personality of the two men (and a dog) that she hires to take her down the river really adds to the appeal of the book. I wish there would have been photographs!

The River Queen by Mary Morris is the tale of the author's journey to find something of her father as she boats down the Mississippi from northern Wisconsin to northern Kentucky. Morris' father passed away at the age of 102, but left unanswered questions about his childhood and his life. She decides to try and discover what it was about the Mississippi River that so caputred his imagination as a young man. She hires a houseboat, not quite the sparkling white, new model she was expecting, and two eccentric men to captain it down the river. Tom and Jerry (honest, that's their names) come with their own stories about the river (and Tom also brings along his dog Samantha Jean who he refers to as his spouse). Morris does an excellent job of mixing the story of her trek down the river with stories about her family as well as historical tidbits about the river and its denizens, making for a meandering tale that imitates the river itself. Some of her sidetracking includes intriguing people, like Bix Beiderbecke, who I found myself listening to last night. Morris, who is grieving the loss of her father and empty nest syndrome as her only daughter leaves for college, battles mayflies, tough memories and the differences between men and women with aplomb, but when it comes time to actually investigating her father's stories, only once in Hannibal, does she dig into them. Often when the time comes, she passes them by with small comment or observes as one of her shipmates does it for her. This is a fascinating tale of a woman's journey out of grief, but it would have been more compelling if she had spent more time looking for the long lost island and less time attacking tourist trap Hannibal, MO. Due to Hurricane Katrina, Morris is unable to fulfill her desire to travel the river to its end, and it feels like her journey ends without completion of either desire.

This book is all about the trials and realizations of a mother whose family is gone and she has nothing to do now. I actually enjoyed this book because it showed a different side to the world. A much more mellow, and "go-with-the-flow" kind of feeling. The traveling crew on the boat didn't have any plans, and just went with what happened. It was nice to be able to read and experience something different like that in a book.

I would like to read another writing by Mary Morris sometime in the future because she has a flow, and graceful way of writing that makes you feel like you're in the book. That you're on the boat looking out on the Mississippi horizon, in this case. It was a very perspective book to realize how crazy your own life is, and to be able to kick back and relax and live someone else's life for a few moments.

I never meant to purchase this book. I was browsing at a local bookstore, knew the author's work from "Nothing to Declare," and sat down with it in a big stuffed chair on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. I did not get up for another two hours! There are several themes running through this book. One is that of life's options narrowing, given that the author's own perch is that of, shall we say, post-middle age. Another theme is of life's opportunities having been fully seized on, even if not all of the efforts described by Morris actually panned out. A third theme is an empathetic one, as Morris contextualizes her own personal ups and downs within the tragically human setting of post-Hurriane Katrina. For me, it is the fourth theme that made this book such a fun and compelling read: parts of it are an absolute riot. Morris is superb at using dry humor and tongue-in-cheek narrative to tell her own stroy through the lens of her reactions to others. I have given the book as a summer reading gift to at least five friends. I highly recommend it.

I enjoyed this book immensely for a number of reasons. One of the reviews listed it as a "midlife memoir", which I think is quite accurate. But a couple of them described a somewhat grumpy tone.
I didn't really see it that way.

I thought that it was an honest account of what it feels like to decide upon undertaking a (somewhat) spontaneous adventure later in life. A lumpy bed and lousy food are certainly going to bother you more than they did when you were twenty. It doesn't mean that you didn't enjoy your adventure, and I think the author made that very clear. In fact, the end of the book was really uplifting.

I also appreciated the recurring theme that nothing is quite what you remember it to be. Once again, I don't see this as complaining.
It's a fact of life and the author does a wonderful job of incorporating this slightly nostalgic/sad, but very real feeling into her tale.

"Nothing to Declare" was the adventure of a young woman with a lot of insight and courage. "The River Queen" is that same woman, all grown up. She's had a lifetime of relationships and experiences behind her that are going to affect her perspectives when she travels.

I ordered the book, it arrived quickly and in good shape. Love the story makes me want to hop on a boat and head down the Mississippi.

At the end of the book the boat is about to be docked at Paris Landing, Tennessee, the end of the southerly journey. Five years (and a couple of owners) later, my wife and I stumbled across it and (gulp) bought it.
So we had a special reason for reading "The River Queen." I was looking for clues about the boat -- apparently the exhaust leak in the starboard engine's exhaust manifold is a recurring problem (she mentions it on p. 22). But at least we know the boat was out of the water and the bottom repainted in 2005 (pp. 18, 23, 80).
But the book is really not intended to be about the boat but about those crises that hit us in midlife -- the recent death of her father, and being left an empty-nester as her daughter moves off to college.
On that level, the book is great. Mary Morris is relentlessly honest, but her sense of humor removes any hint of grimness. The river pilot acting as captain reminds her in many ways of her father, giving insight into why she works so hard to win his approval. Although she never says it quite that baldly.
This is one of those books that reminds us that such works are written by real people, who live and breathe and stub their unprotected toes on the hawse-pipe on the forward deck.
Oh, the best speed for the engines? That would be 1500 RPM, as Captain Jerry explains on P. 130. Which is a way to say that Morris's writing is enlivened with hundreds of little razor-sharp observations of fact about her journey.
A good example for us all, as we travel on our own voyages.

joe white
Nashville TN