The call of the Amazon

The Devil’s Garden. By Edward Docx. Picador; 324 pages; £12.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk

State of Wonder. By Ann Patchett. Harper; 353 pages; $26.99. Bloomsbury; £12.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

IMPENETRABLE forest, strange cultures and dangerous creatures—testing man’s courage against the worst that nature can throw at him or her—have long fascinated storytellers of all cultures, from the anonymous author of “Babes in the Wood” to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. What wilder botanical battlefield is there than Amazonia? Its vast size and impassable interior seem to defy exploration, which is the allure for two talented novelists, one British and the other American. Both test their protagonists to the limit as a way of exploring our continued fascination with the rainforest and the extraordinary power it wields over those who are unprepared or ill-equipped to deal with its mental and physical demands.

Corruption in “The Devil’s Garden”, Edward Docx’s third novel, comes in many guises. Dr John Forle and his small team of researchers lead a peaceful existence on a station deep in the jungle. His quiet work involves tracking ants—a military society that poisons patches of the rainforest (the eponymous devil’s gardens) to ensure their survival. But the researchers’ routine is shattered when a turf war erupts between tribal drug smugglers and military forces sent by the government to secure the oil-rich area for investment. Unwilling to be forced out from the station that is the heart of their work, the research team gets caught up in the escalating violence.

Mr Docx’s prose is punctured with episodes of gruesome torture. When the team is kidnapped, the soldiers cut out the tongue of a local missionary as a way of silencing his prayers, and afterwards hold up the twitching bloody lump in glee. Dr Forle escapes but becomes delirious with hunger and fever. Coming upon the soldiers’ leader he stabs him with animal savagery. Mr Docx does not shield your eyes.

Corruption is a theme that leaches into the story from the bottom up: the ants, the immediate jungle conflict, the invasiveness of Western society. A diplomatic storm trooper, known as the Judge, describes the ugly truth to Dr Forle: “It began …in blood and slaughter; it became conquest and slavery…in need of disguise, it pulled on the robes of religion and then the suit and tie of the market; until eventually it came to conservationism.” Mr Docx doesn’t endorse Western intrusion, but he doesn’t apologise for it either.

In Ann Patchett’s “State of Wonder” nature is the threat, not humans. Dr Marina Singh is sent into the Amazon to investigate the progress of a fertility study that her mentor from medical school, Dr Annick Swenson, is conducting in secret. Dr Swenson lives with the Lakashi tribe—a joyful people whose women can reproduce well into old age thanks to a magical substance they ingest by ritually scraping their teeth down the trunks of a tree. Marina also wants to uncover the story of a colleague’s death, but she soon becomes engrossed by Dr Swenson’s miraculous work.

Marina struggles with her new environment: the nightmares from the Larium she has to take against malaria, deadly insects, extreme weather and, always, the whispering darkness. In her fear she becomes reliant on a young deaf boy called Easter, and slowly assimilates into the tribe. Ms Patchett tracks Marina’s thoughts with particular intuitiveness so that her character’s feelings of isolation, fear and self-doubt begin to creep across the reader’s own skin. Soon, though, comes the test. When Easter is attacked by an anaconda Marina takes a machete and hacks the snake’s body away, saving the boy’s life. Later she performs a caesarean in a treetop hut with no drugs or equipment; a procedure that has haunted her since she blinded a newborn in a similar operation in her student days. Despite these adventures, the book is slow-paced with long passages about the forest and Marina’s own thoughts. But the pay-off comes from being immersed in Ms Patchett’s enchanting prose and wondrous storytelling.

Mr Docx’s “The Devil’s Garden” is written in punchy action-packed paragraphs, whereas “State of Wonder” is a personal journey, crammed with sumptuous description. V.S. Naipaul’s recent comments about female authors—that they can never be his equal because of their “sentimentality, and narrow view of the world”—are debunked here. Ms Patchett has a feminine touch, and that is one of the strengths of her writing. Both books carry the same message: despite the dangers of the jungle, it will forever tempt those with a thirst for adventure and knowledge, but intervention often causes more harm than good—for Amazonia and the plucky pioneers. Perhaps it is best left untouched.