Barbed Wire & Babushkas: A River Odyssey Across Siberia
by Paul Grogan
Virgin Books $124
P.J. O'Rourke once wrote: 'There are no good books about pleasant journeys. It is the job of the travel writer to have an awful time.' In its first few pages, Paul Grogan's tale of two young men on a daunting 4,400km river journey from Mongolia to the Pacific ocean would seem a good candidate to meet O'Rourke's standards. The river passes through the rugged wilds of Siberia, promising a challenging story of man versus nature. And as the river in question, the Amur (Heilong He, or Black Dragon in Chinese), marks the politically sensitive border between China and Russia, the journey will be under heavy scrutiny from Russia's border patrol (the two aren't even permitted to set foot on the Chinese side). Thus, the reader is also set up for a good tale of intrepid explorers versus forces of authority.
But while Grogan and Richard Boddington's journey was exciting, the tale falls flat. The author makes the mistake of taking O'Rourke's axiom too far. Throughout 20 chapters, Grogan tries hard to create a sense of impending failure, ending nearly every chapter with an allusion to some potential tragedy waiting for the pair just around the bend. In each case, the peril turns out to be decidedly less than.
The gunboat filled with Russian soldiers seemingly intent on brutality at the end of one chapter winds up merely checking that their documents are in order. By the third paragraph of the next chapter, they're all trading postcards and vodka shots. The border guards sticking their Kalashnikovs in their tent at the end of another chapter are just stopping by for a