Once Upon a River by Diane SetterfieldMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
First off, I won an ARC of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. Thanks so much! It made my day when I received it, as I love The Thirteenth Tale and enjoyed Bellman and Black though I found it disappointing at the end. I believe Ms. Setterfield is one of the great modern storytellers, a female counterpart to Neil Gaiman perhaps. So I thought myself one of the world's luckiest people to receive this ARC.
As soon as I began reading I felt even luckier. The story of Once Upon a River has all of the pull of a strong current; you cannot escape it, but you do not want to. You want to drift with it and let it take you to all of the places it needs to go. From the miraculous events on the darkest night of the year to the farmer of aristocratic and African descent (my favourite character, and such a breath of fresh air in the usually all-white English literary world) talking to his pigs and mourning the loss of his favourite, to a young couple bereaved into desperation, to a poor woman who lives more simply than she must because a malign presence will take anything good away...there are such well-drawn scenes and characters that you are almost certain that Daunt's photographs are real and are probably sitting in a dusty museum basement somewhere awaiting discovery.
I think my favourite part of all is the use of folk/fairy tales to explain and tell the story and echo the emotions of the characters. The myth of Quietly is especially powerful, and as a parent it is one I can understand completely.
It also must be understood that the Thames is its own character, and its presence hangs ever over the story like a miasma. Reading this, I felt the dampness of the river, smelled the mud of it, and was often reminded of my own river, the river that flooded my house several times as a child because we lived too near, the Choctawhatchee. I think that anyone who has ever lived near a river will probably enjoy this book even more than those who have not, but this book is for everyone.
I will put one warning though, and that is that this book could be very difficult reading for people who have lost a child. There are some heartbreaking scenes that were difficult for me to read as a mother, because my mind put my own child's image into the story no matter what i did. I think this is a book that will make you go check on your child as they sleep just a little bit more often, or hug them harder, and of course that is a good thing.
I didn't want Once Upon a River to end, but when it did, it ended perfectly. I know I will read it again and more than likely will loan my copy to my mother to let her read it. If I had a book club, this would be the book I would choose for us to read. I guess I'm just saying that it swept me away and its pull is on me still.
To both the publisher and Goodreads, thank you again for giving my this fascinating world wrapped in paper pages!
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