The Devil's Garden Paperback – 2 Feb. 2012

This is one of my few forays into general fiction and I left feeling underwhelmed. The Devil's Garden was billed as an action packed book of The Heart of Darkness mould, but lacked that book's intensity. The location was good but I think it was touched on a little too lightly, and I think the politics could have been used a bit more - here it was mainly off scene. Also I didn't get the connection with the ants, were they a metaphor for something, if they were then they were also underused. All in all the book touches on things but offers very little.--this book is readable but unspectacular.

Gripping and mysterious from page one. this exotic, baleful tale of cynical corruption, gruesome violence and politico-industrial machinations in the heart of a South American rain forest pits the idealism of a group of scientists, examining ant behaviour, against malign human antagonists who prove to be even more lethal than the forest itself. My supreme delight was in the beautifully worked-out sub-plot of the scientific project: the study of altruistic behaviour among a particular species of ant. If altruism can be proved, the basis of neo-Darwinism is undermined, if not overthrown, and a mighty challenge raised against the modern religion of Scientific Materialism. The author cunningly (and properly, because this is literature not polemic) leaves the issue unresolved. But as the story heads unputdownably towards its ghastly - but also uplifting - conclusion,a delicious question mark hovers: are the ants better than we are? After all, they have the potential to take over and destroy the whole forest but for some reason (never discovered) they do not. And it seems that they may be kinder to one another than we are.

We join Dr Forle and his colleagues at a remote research station tucked away in the virgin tropical jungle. Following a bereavement, he throws himself in to the study of ants and the 'Devil's Gardens' they create, hoping to unlock secrets which will challenge the very principle of human existence, the theory of evolution. However, the life of Dr Forle and his crew is turned upside down when the sinister Colonel and the eccentric Judge take up residence at their station, using the cover story of registering the indigenous population for the vote. He soon finds himself drawn into the murky criminal underworld where it is never clear where government policy ends and organised crime begins.One of the main obstacles getting in the way of me enjoying this book is Dr Forle - He is a one-dimensional and colourless character who inspires no loyalty or empathy in the reader at all. He even comes across as a coward at times, hiding in the shadows when bullies pick on weaker individuals. Where he could seem mysterious and haunted he comes across as introspective and gloomy, making me tire quickly of his narrative voice.In fact, all the characters suffer from the same lack of personality, making it hard to tell them apart and even harder to care what happens to them. To make matters worse, most of the dialogue is clunky, contrived and unnatural. I get the impression that Docx uses dialogue between the characters to air his anthropological musings, but people simply don't talk like that. All he succeeded in producing was constant artificial and synthetic dialogue which made me disconnect at once.I also found the plot messy and strange - Who the Colonel and the Judge work for and what they are trying to achieve is never really cleared up, which made the whole thing seem rather pointless. I still don't know if the conflict was created by organised crime from cocaine barons, a corrupt government trying to clear away local tribes so they can move loggers in, or if it has something to do with oil or if it's simply just the tribes fighting amongst themselves. Either way, we are treated to some graphic scenes of grotesque violence which seem gratuitous and unnecessary.Despite all of this, the one thing I loved was the jungle. Without a doubt the jungle is the main character - a huge, hot, living, breathing thing constantly humming in the background. Every paragraph dedicated to the jungle is intensely atmospheric, it practically buzzes and simmers with strength and ruthlessness. And it is filled to the brim with insects which I could practically feel creeping on my skin.What an amazing book this would have been if Docx had applied the same talent throughout! But unfortunately he has not, and the result is boring and disappointing.

There are too many themes and the result is muddled. Ants, Darwinism, rainforest destruction, remote tribes, scientific study are jumbled together in a plot that pits 'civilised' westerners against the brutality of everyone else. Sometimes, as in the utterances of the judge, I sensed a hint of Conrad and the ability to peer into the human soul but this theme gets lost in the mayhem of the main plot. By the end, the brutality begins to look like a racist caricature of various groups of South Americans. The westerners flee for their lives and forget their supposed altruism but then maybe the altruistic ants would do the same in a panic. Beneath the muddle of themes there lies nothing profound.