This is an enchanting book, written with lush, descriptive prose. Its atmospheric language transports one with a vivid sense of place and timelessness. It seamlessly combines and shifts between historical mystery, the supernatural, folklore, superstition, and reality. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy magical realism with the caution that the book is slow paced and not to expect frantic action.
The story takes place in a small village set beside the River Thames. It appears to belong to the Middle Ages until you learn the camera has already been invented and the stage of photography would place it in the late 1800s. The lifestyles and superstitious beliefs of the villagers give the story a medieval feel which made me feel dislocated in time. The book is a slow burn which helps one connect with the magic of it all.
The Thames, in each of its seasons, becomes a living character, as do the ghosts believed to haunt it by boats, such as the ferryman and his mysterious successor. Some believe a nearby village is visited by dragons.
At the Swan Tavern, working-class men gather in the evenings to drink and to listen to the storytellers for entertainment. One night a man stumbles into the tavern. He is dripping wet, bleeding profusely, his face so badly injured he would be unrecognizable. He carries what is thought to be a ventriloquist’s dummy or a large doll. It turns out that it is a four-year-old girl who is dead from drowning. A nurse, Rita, who has all the capabilities of a doctor confirms that she is dead. To the astonishment of those in the tavern, the girl comes back to life but remains mute. Rita cares for both the man and child, nursing them back to health.
Several people claim the young girl. There are the Vaughns whose marriage was shattered when their daughter vanished two years before, believed to be kidnapped. Mr. Armstrong suspects she is the daughter of his estranged, wayward son. The son’s wife is believed to have drowned the girl before taking her own life. The housemaid at the parsonage claims the girl is her sister, but the timeline makes this impossible. Rita would like to care for the mute child as her daughter. She has an aversion to childbirth having seen so much of it in her nursing profession. Rumours, recollections and stories about the little girl become the stuff of folklore.
A beautifully written story.
$20.30$20.30
FREE delivery:
Friday, Nov 17
Ships from: Amazon.ca Sold by: Amazon.ca
$20.30$20.30
FREE delivery:
Friday, Nov 17
Ships from: Amazon.ca
Sold by: Amazon.ca
$16.25
$16.25
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
OK
Once Upon a River: A Novel Paperback – July 2 2019
by
Diane Setterfield
(Author)
Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
Kindle Edition
"Please retry" | — | — |
Library binding, Large Print
"Please retry" | $39.29 | $20.14 |
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$20.30","priceAmount":20.30,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"20","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"30","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"YBXrBR0wc3Uu6cx7CI6QWS6%2FBvqfbxa0QwvMqXdoPrs6leaTJJYsQ2r%2FsoTRK0oL6bRAxQWvOPzx%2FaugymsXsQxuSsIcXAV%2F9xwL9USZZRUv%2BScOaFa04lJH86a7V6gPAAYA%2F%2FtHsDg%3D","locale":"en-CA","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$16.25","priceAmount":16.25,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"25","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"YBXrBR0wc3Uu6cx7CI6QWS6%2FBvqfbxa03BXHR3NDxCymgnJf02qrqQOfAlpWHDF5%2F9vAjhM8aqMRT%2FAtNc0XTHA0HiOF52sPyzNXbanqFt06s52uf7YhgG3esggCdZ65YmmUq46WLilJxKwFHYxb6e%2F8WeAON%2BsJAac%2B9AiOqhxvNMRZHAVGlg%3D%3D","locale":"en-CA","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}
Purchase options and add-ons
From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “eerie and fascinating” (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a “swift and entrancing, profound and beautiful” (Madeline Miller, internationally bestselling author of Circe) novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious.
On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed.
Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless.
Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son’s secret liaison stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson’s housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known.
Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, this is “a beguiling tale, full of twists and turns like the river at its heart, and just as rich and intriguing” (M.L. Stedman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Light Between Oceans).
On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed.
Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless.
Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son’s secret liaison stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson’s housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known.
Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, this is “a beguiling tale, full of twists and turns like the river at its heart, and just as rich and intriguing” (M.L. Stedman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Light Between Oceans).
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJuly 2 2019
- Dimensions13.49 x 3.05 x 20.96 cm
- ISBN-10074329808X
- ISBN-13978-0743298087
Frequently bought together
This item: Once Upon a River: A Novel
$20.30$20.30
Only 3 left in stock.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Try again!
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Product description
Review
"This enchanting book from the author of The Thirteenth Tale is filled with folklore, romance, suspense."-- "Bustle, "The 8 Best Fiction Books Coming Out In December 2018""
"This probing inquiry into human nature is also spooky fun."-- "Vulture, "6 New Books You Should Read This December""
"A magical, lyrical tale, filled with quests and questions."-- "The BBC"
"A mosaic of modern folklore."-- "InStyle"
"Diane Setterfield weaves a beautiful, suspenseful mystery . . . will keep you engrossed until the very last page."-- "PopSugar"
"Setterfield fills this richly layered plot with a fascinating cast of memorable characters who weave in and out of each other's lives."-- "Booklist"
"Setterfield masterfully assembles an ensemble of wounded, vulnerable characters who, nevertheless, live by the slimmest margins of hope--hope that springs from family, from the search for meaning, from people's decency to strangers, from the belief that truth heals and sets one free . . . Celebrates the timeless secrets of life, death and imagination--and the enduring power of words. Fans, rejoice!"-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"Setterfield's prose feels lifted from another era, a gothic lyricism resembling old classics like Jane Eyre."-- "Entertainment Weekly"
"The heart of the story are the relationships that twist and turn, as if they also follow the river."-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"Utterly enthralling."-- "New York Journal of Books"
"I was completely spellbound by this book. Numerous strands of the same story are skillfully woven into a magical web from which I, as a reader, had no desire to escape. Setterfield's prose is beautiful, dark and eerily atmospheric, and her rich cast of characters convincingly illustrate the best and worst of humanity. Utterly brilliant!" --Ruth Hogan, internationally bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS and THE WISDOM OF SALLY RED SHOES
"Diane Setterfield has created a true reading experience. Once Upon a River is the story of three missing girls and three desperate families all set against the Thames and woven together with magic, mystery, and mayhem. It is beautiful and heartbreaking and altogether wondrous. Simply put, it is a joy to read."--Ariel Lawhon, author of I WAS ANASTASIA
"Once Upon a River is a delight, just marvelous. I devoured it in gulps."--Jo Baker, internationally bestselling author of LONGBOURN
"Once Upon A River succeeds in doing what you hope every book will do - pull you in from the first page, hold you captive in the middle, then leave you satisfied and thoughtful at the end. I loved it."--Renee Knight, critically-acclaimed author of DISCLAIMER
"This probing inquiry into human nature is also spooky fun."-- "Vulture, "6 New Books You Should Read This December""
"A magical, lyrical tale, filled with quests and questions."-- "The BBC"
"A mosaic of modern folklore."-- "InStyle"
"Diane Setterfield weaves a beautiful, suspenseful mystery . . . will keep you engrossed until the very last page."-- "PopSugar"
"Setterfield fills this richly layered plot with a fascinating cast of memorable characters who weave in and out of each other's lives."-- "Booklist"
"Setterfield masterfully assembles an ensemble of wounded, vulnerable characters who, nevertheless, live by the slimmest margins of hope--hope that springs from family, from the search for meaning, from people's decency to strangers, from the belief that truth heals and sets one free . . . Celebrates the timeless secrets of life, death and imagination--and the enduring power of words. Fans, rejoice!"-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"Setterfield's prose feels lifted from another era, a gothic lyricism resembling old classics like Jane Eyre."-- "Entertainment Weekly"
"The heart of the story are the relationships that twist and turn, as if they also follow the river."-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"Utterly enthralling."-- "New York Journal of Books"
"I was completely spellbound by this book. Numerous strands of the same story are skillfully woven into a magical web from which I, as a reader, had no desire to escape. Setterfield's prose is beautiful, dark and eerily atmospheric, and her rich cast of characters convincingly illustrate the best and worst of humanity. Utterly brilliant!" --Ruth Hogan, internationally bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS and THE WISDOM OF SALLY RED SHOES
"Diane Setterfield has created a true reading experience. Once Upon a River is the story of three missing girls and three desperate families all set against the Thames and woven together with magic, mystery, and mayhem. It is beautiful and heartbreaking and altogether wondrous. Simply put, it is a joy to read."--Ariel Lawhon, author of I WAS ANASTASIA
"Once Upon a River is a delight, just marvelous. I devoured it in gulps."--Jo Baker, internationally bestselling author of LONGBOURN
"Once Upon A River succeeds in doing what you hope every book will do - pull you in from the first page, hold you captive in the middle, then leave you satisfied and thoughtful at the end. I loved it."--Renee Knight, critically-acclaimed author of DISCLAIMER
About the Author
Diane Setterfield is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Thirteenth Tale, and a former academic, specializing in twentieth-century French literature, particularly the works of Andre Gide. She lives in Oxford, England.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1. The Story Begins… The Story Begins…
The Story Begins…
There was once an inn that sat peacefully on the bank of the Thames at Radcot, a day’s walk from the source. There were a great many inns along the upper reaches of the Thames at the time of this story and you could get drunk in all of them, but beyond the usual ale and cider each one had some particular pleasure to offer. The Red Lion at Kelmscott was musical: bargemen played their fiddles in the evening and cheesemakers sang plaintively of lost love. Inglesham had the Green Dragon, a tobacco-scented haven of contemplation. If you were a gambling man, the Stag at Eaton Hastings was the place for you, and if you preferred brawling, there was nowhere better than the Plough just outside Buscot. The Swan at Radcot had its own specialty. It was where you went for storytelling.
The Swan was a very ancient inn, perhaps the most ancient of them all. It had been constructed in three parts: one was old, one was very old, and one was older still. These different elements had been harmonized by the thatch that roofed them, the lichen that grew on the old stones, and the ivy that scrambled up the walls. In summertime day-trippers came out from the towns on the new railway, to hire a punt or a skiff at the Swan and spend an afternoon on the river with a bottle of ale and a picnic, but in winter the drinkers were all locals, and they congregated in the winter room. It was a plain room in the oldest part of the inn, with a single window pierced through the thick stone wall. In daylight this window showed you Radcot Bridge and the river flowing through its three serene arches. By night (and this story begins at night) the bridge was drowned black and it was only when your ears noticed the low and borderless sound of great quantities of moving water that you could make out the stretch of liquid blackness that flowed outside the window, shifting and undulating, darkly illuminated by some energy of its own making.
Nobody really knows how the tradition of storytelling started at the Swan, but it might have had something to do with the Battle of Radcot Bridge. In 1387, five hundred years before the night this story began, two great armies met at Radcot Bridge. The who and the why of it are too long to tell, but the outcome was that three men died in battle, a knight, a varlet, and a boy, and eight hundred souls were lost, drowned in the marshes, attempting to flee. Yes, that’s right. Eight hundred souls. That’s a lot of story. Their bones lie under what are now watercress fields. Around Radcot they grow the watercress, harvest it, crate it up, and send it to the towns on barges, but they don’t eat it. It’s bitter, they complain, so bitter it bites you back, and besides, who wants to eat leaves nourished by ghosts? When a battle like that happens on your doorstep and the dead poison your drinking water, it’s only natural that you would tell of it, over and over again. By force of repetition you would become adept at the telling. And then, when the crisis was over and you turned your attention to other things, what is more natural than that this newly acquired expertise would come to be applied to other tales? Five hundred years later they still tell the story of the Battle of Radcot Bridge, five or six times a year on special occasions.
The landlady of the Swan was Margot Ockwell. There had been Ockwells at the Swan for as long as anyone could remember, and quite likely for as long as the Swan had existed. In law her name was Margot Bliss, for she was married, but law was a thing for the towns and cities; here at the Swan she remained an Ockwell. Margot was a handsome woman in her late fifties. She could lift barrels without help and had legs so sturdy, she never felt the need to sit down. It was rumored she even slept on her feet, but she had given birth to thirteen children, so clearly she must have lain down sometimes. She was the daughter of the last landlady, and her grandmother and great-grandmother had run the inn before that, and nobody thought anything of it being women in charge at the Swan at Radcot. It was just the way it was.
Margot’s husband was Joe Bliss. He had been born at Kemble, twenty-five miles upstream, a hop and a skip from where the Thames emerges from the earth in a trickle so fine that it is scarcely more than a patch of dampness in the soil. The Blisses were chesty types. They were born small and ailing and most of them were goners before they were grown. Bliss babies grew thinner and paler as they lengthened, until they expired completely, usually before they were ten and often before they were two. The survivors, including Joe, got to adulthood shorter and slighter than average. Their chests rattled in winter, their noses ran, their eyes watered. They were kind, with mild eyes and frequent playful smiles.
At eighteen, an orphan and unfit for physical labor, Joe had left Kemble to seek his fortune doing he knew not what. From Kemble there are as many directions a man can go in as elsewhere in the world, but the river has its pull; you’d have to be mightily perverse not to follow it. He came to Radcot and, being thirsty, stopped for a drink. The frail-looking young man, with floppy black hair that contrasted with his pallor, sat unnoticed, eking out his glass of ale, admiring the innkeeper’s daughter, and listening to a story or two. He found it captivating to be among people who spoke out loud the kind of tales that had been alive inside his head since boyhood. In a quiet interval he opened his mouth and Once upon a time… came out.
Joe Bliss discovered his destiny that day. The Thames had brought him to Radcot and at Radcot he stayed. With a bit of practice he found he could turn his tongue to any kind of tale, whether it be gossip, historic, traditional, folk, or fairy. His mobile face could convey surprise, trepidation, relief, doubt, and any other feeling as well as any actor. Then there were his eyebrows. Luxuriantly black, they told as much of the story as his words did. They drew together when something momentous was coming, twitched when a detail merited close attention, and arched when a character might not be what he seemed. Watching his eyebrows, paying attention to their complex dance, you noticed all sorts of things that might otherwise have passed you by. Within a few weeks of his starting to drink at the Swan, he knew how to hold the listeners spellbound. He held Margot spellbound too, and she him.
At the end of a month, Joe walked sixty miles to a place quite distant from the river, where he told a story in a competition. He won first prize, naturally, and spent the winnings on a ring. He came home grey with fatigue, collapsed into bed for a week, and, at the end of it, got to his knees and proposed marriage to Margot.
“I don’t know…” her mother said. “Can he work? Can he earn a living? How will he look after a family?”
“Look at the takings,” Margot pointed out. “See how much busier we are since Joe started telling his stories. Suppose I don’t marry him, Ma. He might go away from here. Then what?”
It was true. People came more often to the inn these days, and from further away, and they stayed longer to hear the stories Joe told. They all bought drinks. The Swan was thriving.
“But with all these strong, handsome young men that come in here and admire you so… wouldn’t one of those do better?”
“It is Joe that I want,” Margot said firmly. “I like the stories.”
She got her way.
That was all nearly forty years before the events of this story, and in the meantime Margot and Joe had raised a large family. In twenty years they had produced twelve robust daughters. All had Margot’s thick brown hair and sturdy legs. They grew up to be buxom young women with blithe smiles and endless cheer. All were married now. One was a little fatter and one a little thinner, one a little taller and one a little shorter, one a little darker and one a little fairer, but in every other respect they were so like their mother that the drinkers could not tell them apart, and when they returned to help out at busy times, they were universally known as Little Margot. After bearing all these girls there had been a lull in the family life of Margot and Joe, and both of them thought her years of child-bearing were at an end, but then came the last pregnancy and Jonathan, their only son.
With his short neck and his moon face, his almond eyes with their exaggerated upward tilt, his dainty ears and nose, the tongue that seemed too big for his constantly smiling mouth, Jonathan did not look like other children. As he grew it became clear that he was different from them in other ways too. He was fifteen now, but where other boys of his age were looking forward impatiently to manhood, Jonathan was content to believe that he would live at the inn forever with his mother and father, and wished for nothing else.
Margot was still a strong and handsome woman, and Joe’s hair had whitened, though his eyebrows were as dark as ever. He was now sixty, which was ancient for a Bliss. People put his survival down to the endlessness of Margot’s care for him. These last few years he was sometimes so weak that he lay in bed for two or three days at a time, eyes closed. He was not sleeping—no, it was a place beyond sleep that he visited in these periods. Margot took his sinking spells calmly. She kept the fire in to dry the air, tilted cooled broth between his lips, brushed his hair, and smoothed his eyebrows. Other people fretted to see him suspended so precariously between one liquid breath and the next, but Margot took it in her stride. “Don’t you worry, he’ll be all right,” she would tell you. And he was. He was a Bliss, that’s all. The river had seeped into him and made his lungs marshy.
It was solstice night, the longest night of the year. For weeks the days had been shrinking, first gradually, then precipitously, so that it was now dark by mid-afternoon. As is well-known, when the moon hours lengthen, human beings come adrift from the regularity of their mechanical clocks. They nod at noon, dream in waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night. It is a time of magic. And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between worlds. Dreams and stories merge with lived experience, the dead and the living brush against each other in their comings and goings, and the past and the present touch and overlap. Unexpected things can happen. Did the solstice have anything to do with the strange events at the Swan? You will have to judge for yourself.
Now you know everything you need to know, the story can begin.
The drinkers gathered in the Swan that night were the regulars. Gravel diggers, cressmen, and bargemen for the most part, but Beszant the boat mender was there too, and so was Owen Albright, who had followed the river to the sea half a century ago and returned two decades later a wealthy man. Albright was arthritic now, and only strong ale and storytelling could reduce the pain in his bones. They had been there since the light had drained out of the sky, emptying and refilling their glasses, tapping out their pipes and restuffing them with pungent tobacco and telling stories.
Albright was recounting the Battle of Radcot Bridge. After five hundred years any story is liable to get a bit stale, and the storytellers had found a way to enliven the telling of it. Certain parts of the tale were fixed by tradition—the armies, their meeting, the death of the knight and his varlet, the eight hundred drowned men—but the boy’s demise was not. Not a thing was known about him except that he was a boy, at Radcot Bridge, and he died there. Out of this void came invention. At each retelling the drinkers at the Swan raised the unknown boy from the dead in order to inflict upon him a new death. He had died countless times over the years, in ways ever more outlandish and entertaining. When a story is yours to tell, you are allowed to take liberties with it—though woe betide any visitor to the Swan who attempted the same thing. What the boy himself made of his regular resurrection is impossible to say, but the point is raising the dead was a not infrequent thing at the Swan, and that’s a detail worth remembering.
Tonight Owen Albright conjured him in the garb of a young entertainer, come to distract the troops while they awaited their orders. Juggling with knives, he slipped in the mud and the knives rained down around him, landing blade down in wet earth, all but the last one, which fell plumb into his eye and killed him instantly before the battle had even begun. The innovation elicited murmurs of appreciation, quickly dampened so the tale could continue, and from then on the tale ran pretty much as it always did.
Afterwards there was a pause. It wasn’t done to jump in too quickly with a new story before the last one was properly digested.
Jonathan had been listening closely.
“I wish I could tell a story,” he said.
He was smiling—Jonathan was a boy who was always smiling—but he sounded wistful. He was not stupid, but school had been baffling to him, the other children had laughed at his peculiar face and strange ways, and he had given it up after a few months. He had not mastered reading or writing. The winter regulars were used to the Ockwell lad, with all his oddness.
“Have a go,” Albright suggested. “Tell one now.”
Jonathan considered it. He opened his mouth and waited, agog, to hear what emerged from it. Nothing did. His face screwed tight with laughter and his shoulders squirmed in hilarity at himself.
“I can’t!” he exclaimed when he recovered himself. “I can’t do it!”
“Some other night, then. You have a bit of a practice and we’ll listen to you when you’re ready.”
“You tell a story, Dad,” Jonathan said. “Go on!”
It was Joe’s first night back in the winter room after one of his sinking spells. He was pale and had been silent all evening. Nobody expected a story from him in his frail state, but at the prompting of his son he smiled mildly and looked up to a high corner of the room where the ceiling was darkened from years of woodsmoke and tobacco. This was the place, Jonathan supposed, where his father’s stories came from. When Joe’s eyes returned to the room, he was ready and opened his mouth to speak.
“Once upon a—”
The door opened.
It was late for a newcomer. Whoever it was did not rush to come in. The cold draft set the candles flickering and carried the tang of the winter river into the smoky room. The drinkers looked up.
Every eye saw, yet for a long moment none reacted. They were trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
The man—if man it was—was tall and strong, but his head was monstrous and they boggled at the sight of it. Was it a monster from a folktale? Were they sleeping and this a nightmare? The nose was askew and flattened, and beneath it was a gaping hollow dark with blood. As sights went, it was horrifying enough, but in its arms the awful creature carried a large puppet, with waxen face and limbs and slickly painted hair.
What roused them to action was the man himself. He first roared, a great bellow as misshapen as the mouth it emerged from, then he staggered and swayed. A pair of farmhands jumped from their seats just in time to grab him under the arms and arrest his fall so that he did not smash his head on the flagstones. At the same time Jonathan Ockwell leapt forward from the fireside, arms outstretched, and into them dropped the puppet with a solid weightiness that took his joints and muscles by surprise.
Returning to their senses, they hoisted the unconscious man onto a table. A second table was dragged so that the man’s legs could be rested upon it. Then when he was laid down and straightened out, they all stood around and raised their candles and lamps over him. The man’s eyes did not flicker.
“Is he dead?” Albright wondered.
There was a round of indistinct murmurs and much frowning.
“Slap his face,” someone suggested. “See if that brings him round.”
“A tot of liquor’ll do it,” another suggested.
Margot elbowed her way to the top of the table and studied the man. “Don’t you go slapping him. Not with his face in that state. Nor pouring anything down his throat. Just you wait a minute.”
Margot turned away to the seat by the hearth. On it was a cushion, and she picked it up and carried it back to the light. With the aid of the candles she spotted a pinprick of white on the cotton. Picking at it with her fingernail, she drew out a feather. The men’s faces watched her, eyes wide with bewilderment.
“I don’t think you’ll wake a dead man by tickling him,” said a gravel digger. “Nor a live one either, not in this state.”
“I’m not going to tickle him,” she replied.
Margot laid the feather on the man’s lips. All peered. For a moment there was nothing, then the soft and plumy parts of the feather shivered.
“He breathes!”
The relief soon gave way to renewed perplexity.
“Who is it, though?” a bargeman asked. “Do anyone know him?”
There followed a few moments of general hubbub, during which they considered the question. One reckoned he knew everybody on the river from Castle Eaton to Duxford, which was some ten miles, and he was sure he didn’t know the fellow. Another had a sister in Lechlade and was certain he had never seen the man there. A third felt that he might have seen the man somewhere, but the longer he looked, the less willing he was to put money on it. A fourth wondered whether he was a river gypsy, for it was the time of year when their boats came down this stretch of the river, to be stared at with suspicion, and everybody made sure to lock their doors at night and bring inside anything that could be lifted. But with that good woolen jacket and his expensive leather boots—no. This was not a ragged gypsy man. A fifth stared and then, with triumph, remarked that the man was the very height and build of Liddiard from Whitey’s Farm, and was his hair not the same color too? A sixth pointed out that Liddiard was here at the other end of the table, and when the fifth looked across, he could not deny it. At the end of these and further discussions, it was agreed by one, two, three, four, five, six, and all the others present that they didn’t know him—at least they didn’t think so—but, looking as he did, who could be certain?
Into the silence that followed this conclusion, a seventh man spoke. “Whatever has befallen him?”
The man’s clothes were soaking wet, and the smell of the river, green and brown, was on him. Some accident on the water, that much was obvious. They talked of dangers on the river, of the water that played tricks on even the wisest of rivermen.
“Is there a boat? Shall I go and see if I can spy one?” Beszant the boat mender offered.
Margot was washing the blood from the man’s face with firm and gentle motions. She winced as she revealed the great gash that split his upper lip and divided his skin into two flaps that gaped to show his broken teeth and bloodied gum.
“Leave the boat,” she instructed. “It is the man that matters. There is more here than I can help with. Who will run for Rita?” She looked round and spotted one of the farmhands who was too poor to drink much. “Neath, you are quick on your feet. Can you run along to Rush Cottage and fetch the nurse without stumbling? One accident is quite enough for one night.”
The young man left.
Jonathan meanwhile had kept apart from the others. The weight of the drenched puppet was cumbersome, so he sat down and arranged it on his lap. He thought of the papier-mâché dragon that the troupe of guisers had brought for a play last Christmastime. It was light and hard and had rapped with a light tat-tat-tat if you beat your fingernails against it. This puppet was not made of that. He thought of the dolls he had seen, stuffed with rice. They were weighty and soft. He had never seen one this size. He sniffed its head. There was no smell of rice—only the river. The hair was made of real hair, and he couldn’t work out how they had joined it to the head. The ear was so real, they might have molded it from a real one. He marveled at the perfect precision of the lashes. Putting his fingertip gently to the soft, damp, tickling ends of them caused the lid to move a little. He touched the lid with the gentlest of touches, and there was something behind. Slippery and globular, it was soft and firm at the same time.
Something darkly unfathomable gripped him. Behind the backs of his parents and the drinkers, he gave the figure a gentle shake. An arm slid and swung from the shoulder joint, in a way a puppet’s arm ought not to swing, and he felt a rising water level, powerful and rapid, inside him.
“It is a little girl.”
In all the discussion around the injured man, nobody heard.
Again, louder: “It is a little girl!”
They turned.
“She won’t wake up.” He held out the sodden little body so that they might see for themselves.
They turned. They moved to stand around Jonathan. A dozen pairs of stricken eyes rested on the little body.
Her skin shimmered like water. The folds of her cotton frock were plastered to the smooth lines of the limbs, and her head tilted on her neck at an angle no puppeteer could achieve. She was a little girl, and they had not seen it, not one of them, though it was obvious. What maker would go to such lengths, making a doll of such perfection only to dress it in the cotton smock any pauper’s daughter might wear? Who would paint a face in that macabre and lifeless manner? What maker other than the good Lord had it in him to make the curve of that cheekbone, the planes of that shin, that delicate foot with five toes individually shaped and sized and detailed? Of course it was a little girl! How could they ever have thought otherwise?
In the room usually so thick with words, there was silence. The men who were fathers thought of their own children and resolved to show them nothing but love till the end of their days. Those who were old and had never known a child of their own suffered a great pang of absence, and those who were childless and still young were pierced with the longing to hold their own offspring in their arms.
At last the silence was broken.
“Good Lord!”
“Dead, poor mite.”
“Drowned!”
“Put the feather on her lips, Ma!”
“Oh, Jonathan. It is too late for her.”
“But it worked with the man!”
“No, son, he was breathing already. The feather only showed us the life that was still in him.”
“It might still be in her!”
“It is plain she is gone, poor lass. She is not breathing, and besides, you have only to look at her color. Who will carry the poor child to the long room? You take her, Higgs.”
“But it’s cold there,” Jonathan protested.
His mother patted his shoulder. “She won’t mind that. She is not really here anymore and it is never cold in the place she has gone to.”
“Let me carry her.”
“You carry the lantern, and unlock the door for Mr. Higgs. She’s heavy for you, my love.”
The gravel digger took the body from Jonathan’s failing grip and lifted her as though she weighed no more than a goose. Jonathan lit the way out and round the side to a small stone outbuilding. A thick wooden door gave onto a narrow windowless storeroom. The floor was of plain earth, and the walls had never been plastered or paneled or painted. In summer it was a good place to leave a plucked duck or a trout that you are not yet hungry for; on a winter night like this one it was bitter. Projecting from one wall was a stone slab, and it was here that Higgs laid her down. Jonathan, remembering the fragility of the papier-mâché, cradled her skull—“So as not to hurt her”—as it came into contact with the stone.
Higgs’s lantern cast a circle of light onto the girl’s face.
“Ma said she’s dead,” Jonathan said.
“That’s right, lad.”
“Ma says she’s in another place.”
“She is.”
“She looks as though she’s here, to me.”
“Her thoughts have emptied out of her. Her soul has passed.”
“Couldn’t she be asleep?”
“Nay, lad. She’d’ve woke up by now.”
The lantern cast flickering shadows onto the unmoving face, the warmth of its light tried to mask the dead white of the skin, but it was no substitute for the inner illumination of life.
“There was a girl who slept for a hundred years, once. She was woke up with a kiss.”
Higgs blinked fiercely. “I think that was just a story.”
The circle of light shifted from the girl’s face and illuminated Higgs’s feet as they made their way out again, but at the door he discovered that Jonathan was not beside him. Turning, he raised the lantern again in time to see him stoop and place a kiss on the child’s forehead in the darkness.
Jonathan watched the girl intently. Then his shoulders slumped.
They locked the door behind them and came away.
Product details
- Publisher : Emily Bestler Books; Reprint edition (July 2 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 074329808X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743298087
- Item weight : 431 g
- Dimensions : 13.49 x 3.05 x 20.96 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #521,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,082 in Gotic
- #35,438 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #40,200 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Diane Setterfield is a former academic, specializing in twentieth-century French literature. She lives in Yorkshire, England.
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
17,739 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Reviews with images
Submit a report
A few common reasons customers report reviews:
- Harassment, profanity
- Spam, advertisement, promotions
- Given in exchange for cash, discounts
When we get your report, we'll check if the review meets our Community guidelines. If it doesn't, we'll remove it.
Report
Cancel
Sorry we couldn't load the review
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Please try again later.Close
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from Canada
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in Canada on January 8, 2019
Verified Purchase
Reviewed in Canada on July 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
I heard about this book from my neighbour who was reading it for her book club. I'm so glad I picked it up. The story of a girl who seemingly returned from the dead is incredibly compelling. Two families both believe she is their daughter and I found myself turning the pages trying to discover her true identity. Coupled with this mysterious tale is incredibly beautiful writing. I particularly enjoyed how the author described the Thames River making it almost a character in the story itself. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable read. I look forward to future novels from this author.
Reviewed in Canada on July 31, 2021
Verified Purchase
Something totally different; A real mix of mystery & mythology & a totally enjoyable read. An original thinker!
Reviewed in Canada on August 11, 2022
Verified Purchase
Great price if you like the topic
Reviewed in Canada on July 9, 2019
Verified Purchase
I love the brilliant story telling. I was very attached to one of the characters, Rita. Though I know the river is very much part of the story I am not a fan of long nature descriptions of which there were far too many for my liking.
Reviewed in Canada on January 8, 2021
Verified Purchase
This Setterfield novel certainly sets a mood. Good development of characters and involving plot.
Reviewed in Canada on October 22, 2021
Verified Purchase
Brilliantly written, haunting imagery, greaat and believable characters. Ate it up
Reviewed in Canada on June 3, 2020
Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed her other book, The Thirteenth Tale. I couldn’t wait for this one. I thought the back of the book sounded interesting. However, I COULD NOT read this book. Soooooo wordy, and soooo much writing about the river. And that would be fine, if I felt that it added something important to the book. I was literally so bored trying to read this, I chose to put it away and vaccuum.
Top reviews from other countries
P. G. Harris
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ripping Yarn
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2019Verified Purchase
At the Swan Inn on the banks of the Thames, the landlord has a reputation for storytelling. One Night, on the Winter Solstice, he is about to launch into a tale when a badly injured man staggers in carrying the apparent corpse of a little girl. However, some hours later, she awakes and the story rapidly spreads across the surrounding area of the child who died and came back to life. It is heard by the Vaughans, whose little girl Amelia was kidnapped two years previously. It is heard by Robert Armstrong, a mixed race farmer who is searching for the grand daughter fathered by his wayward son. It is heard by Lily White, housekeeper to a parson, who hides a deep guilt about events in her past. All three arrive to claim the mute child.
Once Upon a River is a story which stands on the cusp of myth and reason. Lily see visions of a dead child, the river folk tell stories of the Ferryman, a grey figure who saves from the river those whose time has not yet come, but who also ferries others "to the other side". The forces of reason opposing them are headed by Rita, a self taught medic and amateur scientist, and Daunt, a photographer.
The story which flows from these sources is one of blackmail and murder, of wicked step-siblings and benevolent parentlng, of spiritualism, fortune telling and illicit distilling, of late flowering love and of pig rearing. One the subject of porcine husbandry, the brief reference to a character called Lord Embury, is surely a nod to P G Wodehouse.
The book's strongest suit is the plotting, which is intricate and satisfying, even if at least one loose end, relating to one of the lost children, is tied up a little too neatly and easily. The complexity of the plot is as it should be in a book whose main theme is storytelling. Indeed there is a hint that the main narrative is actually being told as a story at the Swan, rather than being the subject of the book itself.
Once Upon a River has similarities with the author's first novel, the Thirteenth Tale. The historical setting is never explicitly stated, I would guess at late Victorian, early Edwardian. One also gets a feeling of an author trying a little too hard to reproduce the 19th Century novel. Early on the building blocks of the story clunk a little too obviously into place as a sequence of chapters all end on the same note. Finally, the characters tend a little towards the black and white, with motivations, particularly in the case of Helena, mother of Amelia, not ringing true.
In terms of other novels, the most obvious comparison, possibly encouraged by the choice of cover, is with Sarah Perry's Essex Serpent. It is a comparison which favours that book rather than this. While the two are set in a similar time, and both deal with the conflict between superstition and enlightenment, the latter feels like a very modern novel with nuanced characters, while this feels more like a pastiche.
Other comparators might be Philip Pulman's Belle Sauvage for the setting on the banks of the Thames, Graham Swift's Waterland for the cyclical feel of the seasons, or even Dorothy L Sayer's Nine Tailors for the diluvian finale.
While I have some criticisms of the book, overall it is an enjoyable, enriching read. It is part ghost story, part detective yarn, part thriller, and in the end a rather sweet love story. Above all, it is a nice book, with its heart very firmly in the right place. Ultimately, what Setterfield has delivered is a cracking melodrama which perhaps bears more comparison with Wilkie Collins than with Dickens.
Once Upon a River is a story which stands on the cusp of myth and reason. Lily see visions of a dead child, the river folk tell stories of the Ferryman, a grey figure who saves from the river those whose time has not yet come, but who also ferries others "to the other side". The forces of reason opposing them are headed by Rita, a self taught medic and amateur scientist, and Daunt, a photographer.
The story which flows from these sources is one of blackmail and murder, of wicked step-siblings and benevolent parentlng, of spiritualism, fortune telling and illicit distilling, of late flowering love and of pig rearing. One the subject of porcine husbandry, the brief reference to a character called Lord Embury, is surely a nod to P G Wodehouse.
The book's strongest suit is the plotting, which is intricate and satisfying, even if at least one loose end, relating to one of the lost children, is tied up a little too neatly and easily. The complexity of the plot is as it should be in a book whose main theme is storytelling. Indeed there is a hint that the main narrative is actually being told as a story at the Swan, rather than being the subject of the book itself.
Once Upon a River has similarities with the author's first novel, the Thirteenth Tale. The historical setting is never explicitly stated, I would guess at late Victorian, early Edwardian. One also gets a feeling of an author trying a little too hard to reproduce the 19th Century novel. Early on the building blocks of the story clunk a little too obviously into place as a sequence of chapters all end on the same note. Finally, the characters tend a little towards the black and white, with motivations, particularly in the case of Helena, mother of Amelia, not ringing true.
In terms of other novels, the most obvious comparison, possibly encouraged by the choice of cover, is with Sarah Perry's Essex Serpent. It is a comparison which favours that book rather than this. While the two are set in a similar time, and both deal with the conflict between superstition and enlightenment, the latter feels like a very modern novel with nuanced characters, while this feels more like a pastiche.
Other comparators might be Philip Pulman's Belle Sauvage for the setting on the banks of the Thames, Graham Swift's Waterland for the cyclical feel of the seasons, or even Dorothy L Sayer's Nine Tailors for the diluvian finale.
While I have some criticisms of the book, overall it is an enjoyable, enriching read. It is part ghost story, part detective yarn, part thriller, and in the end a rather sweet love story. Above all, it is a nice book, with its heart very firmly in the right place. Ultimately, what Setterfield has delivered is a cracking melodrama which perhaps bears more comparison with Wilkie Collins than with Dickens.
177 people found this helpful
Report
Asha Seth
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating story of a dead girl who came back to life!
Reviewed in India on April 17, 2019Verified Purchase
The media could not be loaded.
"Every year the river helps herself to a few lives. One drink too many, one hasty step, one second’s lapse of attention is all it takes."
'When Joe's eyes returned to the room, he was ready and opened his mouth to speak.
'Once upon a time----'
The door opened.'
.
.
And begins the story of the dead girl who was later alive.
Also those of the Vaughan couple, the Armstrong household, Daunt - the photographer, Rita - the nurse, Lily - the parsonage maid, Ruby - the Vaughan's baby-sitter, and most importantly, the Ockwells of the Swan Inn.
.
.
Upon the heart of Thames, is the Swam Inn known for its story-telling folks, but everything changes on the long winter night when a stranger intrudes the story-telling aura of the inn, with a drowned child in his arms and thereafter collapses into unconsciousness, with his body a picture of bruises.
.
.
.
Nobody knows who the girl is, who was dead a while ago, and has come to life, quite shocking to the folks present. It is considered a miracle, one, the villagers have never witnessed. Thereupon, people from come forward laying a claim upon the girl, revealing their darkest secrets in the process.
.
.
.
The Vaughan's have lost their only daughter, about the same age, two years back. The Armstrongs put a claim to her name after their wayward son Robin abandons his wife and daughter and resorts to low means of living through trickery, thieving, and the likes. Lily believes the girl to be her sister Ann, who died of mysterious circumstances in childhood, and who has come back from the dead.
.
.
.
Rita, Daunt, and several other people at the Swan, who have laid eyes on the girl, who either is Vaughans' Amelia or Armstrong's Alice, drip of obvious temptation to raise the girl as their own child.
.
.
.
Amidst a most tiresome chasing of the truth behind the mute child, unfolding of stories after stories of the several households in Bampton, Radcot, Buscot, Kelmskott, and Brandy Island, runs the magnificent, all-encompassing, all-pervading, incomprehensible, yet exceedingly alluring, the Thames.
.
.
.
The book is perfect in all sense, except that it wasn't anywhere close to The Thirteenth Tale. The writing was as beautiful as TTT, except it couldn't stir the gentle waves inside of me that craved to be wrecked. Somewhere after 200 pages, the pace dulled down to a crawl and the characters could do only so much to keep you intrigued. It is an absolute masterpiece if you haven't tasted the magic TTT is, and yet I couldn't stop myself comparing knowing full well that it does not do justice as a reviewer. But this once, I want to shake off the rules, and bask in the magical glory TTT is, that at which OUAR, unsatisfactorily failed.
.
.
.
Stories and stories and stories waited to jump at you at every corner, which proved once again, the prodigy that Setterfield is when it comes to story-telling. She truly is a master of the art, and yet somehow everything felt short of something, like an emptiness after you're done reading, like a tickling void that even 450+ pages couldn't completely fill.
.
.
.
It is a four for the amazing story-telling, but I really did expect so much more. And that is why I hold back that one star, that one glorious star!
Asha Seth
Reviewed in India on April 17, 2019
"Every year the river helps herself to a few lives. One drink too many, one hasty step, one second’s lapse of attention is all it takes."
'When Joe's eyes returned to the room, he was ready and opened his mouth to speak.
'Once upon a time----'
The door opened.'
.
.
And begins the story of the dead girl who was later alive.
Also those of the Vaughan couple, the Armstrong household, Daunt - the photographer, Rita - the nurse, Lily - the parsonage maid, Ruby - the Vaughan's baby-sitter, and most importantly, the Ockwells of the Swan Inn.
.
.
Upon the heart of Thames, is the Swam Inn known for its story-telling folks, but everything changes on the long winter night when a stranger intrudes the story-telling aura of the inn, with a drowned child in his arms and thereafter collapses into unconsciousness, with his body a picture of bruises.
.
.
.
Nobody knows who the girl is, who was dead a while ago, and has come to life, quite shocking to the folks present. It is considered a miracle, one, the villagers have never witnessed. Thereupon, people from come forward laying a claim upon the girl, revealing their darkest secrets in the process.
.
.
.
The Vaughan's have lost their only daughter, about the same age, two years back. The Armstrongs put a claim to her name after their wayward son Robin abandons his wife and daughter and resorts to low means of living through trickery, thieving, and the likes. Lily believes the girl to be her sister Ann, who died of mysterious circumstances in childhood, and who has come back from the dead.
.
.
.
Rita, Daunt, and several other people at the Swan, who have laid eyes on the girl, who either is Vaughans' Amelia or Armstrong's Alice, drip of obvious temptation to raise the girl as their own child.
.
.
.
Amidst a most tiresome chasing of the truth behind the mute child, unfolding of stories after stories of the several households in Bampton, Radcot, Buscot, Kelmskott, and Brandy Island, runs the magnificent, all-encompassing, all-pervading, incomprehensible, yet exceedingly alluring, the Thames.
.
.
.
The book is perfect in all sense, except that it wasn't anywhere close to The Thirteenth Tale. The writing was as beautiful as TTT, except it couldn't stir the gentle waves inside of me that craved to be wrecked. Somewhere after 200 pages, the pace dulled down to a crawl and the characters could do only so much to keep you intrigued. It is an absolute masterpiece if you haven't tasted the magic TTT is, and yet I couldn't stop myself comparing knowing full well that it does not do justice as a reviewer. But this once, I want to shake off the rules, and bask in the magical glory TTT is, that at which OUAR, unsatisfactorily failed.
.
.
.
Stories and stories and stories waited to jump at you at every corner, which proved once again, the prodigy that Setterfield is when it comes to story-telling. She truly is a master of the art, and yet somehow everything felt short of something, like an emptiness after you're done reading, like a tickling void that even 450+ pages couldn't completely fill.
.
.
.
It is a four for the amazing story-telling, but I really did expect so much more. And that is why I hold back that one star, that one glorious star!
Images in this review
4 people found this helpful
Report
Peter - The Reading Desk
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Thames has never been so mysterious
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2020Verified Purchase
Once Upon a Thames (River) is a beautiful story of mystery, family and community, wonderfully coloured with the art of storytelling, not only in relation to the novel itself but the celebrated pastime of locals in the story at The Swan in Radcot near Oxford. The historic Thames is the anchor in the story and the theme of water flows throughout the novel. A river that one moment “helpfully turns a wheel to grind your barley, the next it drowns your crop.” A river that sees the silent ferryman ‘Quietly’ perform his mysterious duties.
“He sees to it that those who get into trouble on the river make it safely home again. Unless it is their time. In which case, he sees them to the other side of the river.”
The Swan was recognised as a magnet for storytellers, and their greatest story was just about to unfold when a stranger staggers through the door of the inn with a dead girl in his arms. Both soaked as though from the river, the child appeared drowned and the man now unconscious were both cared for by Rita. Rita is a most fascinating character, a nurse whose experience and pursuit of knowledge competes if not surpasses doctors. A woman whose rational thinking and scientific explanation is fascinating to follow and connect with. Her logical brain is puzzled with the young dead girl.
“Wherever you looked at her, this child was unmarked, unbruised, ungrazed, uncut. The little body was immaculate. ‘Like a doll,’ Jonathan had told her when he described the girl falling into his arms, and she understood why he had thought so.
…
That death had made no mark on her was strange enough, but nor had life, and that, in Rita’s experience, was unique. A body always tells a story – but this child’s corpse was a blank page.”
Rita’s examination is stretched to wonderment when the child awakes, although, she will not or cannot speak.
Several families have mysteriously lost young girls and they believe that the four-year-old child is their daughter or sister. A scenario that suggests some supernatural power, or several lying opportunists in pursuit of their own dark machinations, or grief playing with minds that can’t accept the loss of a loved one. Even those that don’t claim the girl to be their own, have a strange attraction to her and a mix of emotions that brings forward the desire to have a child.
The story towards the resolution of the young girl’s fate and the incidents that struck such loss into several lives is compelling and filled with vivid imagery that casts enthralling insights into a landscape and activity during the Victorian era. Diane Setterfield draws on historical facts to add authenticity to the narrative and one such fascinating subject was expressed through one of hte main characters, Henry Daunt, as the photographer capturing the images of people and places, and he lives on a riverboat where he operates his studio. The real Henry Taunt captured 53,000 photographs most of which now reside in Oxford.
While I loved the idea of the story, I felt that the narrative delayed at times which lost momentum by backtracking or side-stepping with material that wasn’t necessary. I was amazed at times and frustrated at others. This is a thought Ceecee and I had while we read this as a buddy read. I would recommend this book and always great to be reading Diane Setterfield.
“He sees to it that those who get into trouble on the river make it safely home again. Unless it is their time. In which case, he sees them to the other side of the river.”
The Swan was recognised as a magnet for storytellers, and their greatest story was just about to unfold when a stranger staggers through the door of the inn with a dead girl in his arms. Both soaked as though from the river, the child appeared drowned and the man now unconscious were both cared for by Rita. Rita is a most fascinating character, a nurse whose experience and pursuit of knowledge competes if not surpasses doctors. A woman whose rational thinking and scientific explanation is fascinating to follow and connect with. Her logical brain is puzzled with the young dead girl.
“Wherever you looked at her, this child was unmarked, unbruised, ungrazed, uncut. The little body was immaculate. ‘Like a doll,’ Jonathan had told her when he described the girl falling into his arms, and she understood why he had thought so.
…
That death had made no mark on her was strange enough, but nor had life, and that, in Rita’s experience, was unique. A body always tells a story – but this child’s corpse was a blank page.”
Rita’s examination is stretched to wonderment when the child awakes, although, she will not or cannot speak.
Several families have mysteriously lost young girls and they believe that the four-year-old child is their daughter or sister. A scenario that suggests some supernatural power, or several lying opportunists in pursuit of their own dark machinations, or grief playing with minds that can’t accept the loss of a loved one. Even those that don’t claim the girl to be their own, have a strange attraction to her and a mix of emotions that brings forward the desire to have a child.
The story towards the resolution of the young girl’s fate and the incidents that struck such loss into several lives is compelling and filled with vivid imagery that casts enthralling insights into a landscape and activity during the Victorian era. Diane Setterfield draws on historical facts to add authenticity to the narrative and one such fascinating subject was expressed through one of hte main characters, Henry Daunt, as the photographer capturing the images of people and places, and he lives on a riverboat where he operates his studio. The real Henry Taunt captured 53,000 photographs most of which now reside in Oxford.
While I loved the idea of the story, I felt that the narrative delayed at times which lost momentum by backtracking or side-stepping with material that wasn’t necessary. I was amazed at times and frustrated at others. This is a thought Ceecee and I had while we read this as a buddy read. I would recommend this book and always great to be reading Diane Setterfield.
3 people found this helpful
Report
Shari Ring Wolf
4.0 out of 5 stars
Way. Too. LOOOOoooong!
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2021Verified Purchase
I enjoyed the writing style and fast clip the story began with. It's told in a charming "pull up a chair and listen" style, and I happened on a sample of the book, which was actually the first several chapters of the tale. I had to get the entire book and read on!
I don't know what happened. Less than 1/2 way into the book I started feeling restless. By the 75% mark I felt it should have wrapped up. The last quarter of the book was torture. There kept being one MORE chapter! Those last few chapters tied up loose ends and answered questions, but by then I no longer cared. I felt like the author was having a hard time letting go of her characters; didn't want the book to end.
The story's setting is in the U.K., during the late 1800's. I read this in the discussion section at the end, in the author's comments. I thought the story had taken place in the 1600-1700's. I enjoy reading historical fiction set in the US in the late 1800's. I did not recognize anything familiar to that era in this book, not the language, not the social history, and it seemed the tools and props were from an earlier time. I especially found the language "older" than what I'm used to reading in books set past midi century 1800's. Maybe it was because it was set in England. I'm not familiar with English history. I also t the author took liberties with historical eras and facts.
I do think she did some research on the River Thames, and on the interesting pieces of the history of photography.
There were many interesting parts of this book--it was a charming tale. I liked the good people of the story, and oh were the bad guys ever dastardly!! It just kept on... and on...and on! I read at the ending discussion section of that the book is to become a series on television. That makes sense, I suppose. It will take a lot of episodes to get all the story told if everything is to be included.
I don't mind long stories or 500+ page books if the length is necessary. I think in this book, the ends should have been wrapped up sooner, more succinctly.
I don't think I read reviews of this book before I bought it. I happened upon the sample first and became hooked. Ironically, it was the quick paced storytelling that drew me in. Perhaps the reviews would have warned me the pace drags out before the halfway point. If I consider another book by this author, I will read reviews first.
I don't know what happened. Less than 1/2 way into the book I started feeling restless. By the 75% mark I felt it should have wrapped up. The last quarter of the book was torture. There kept being one MORE chapter! Those last few chapters tied up loose ends and answered questions, but by then I no longer cared. I felt like the author was having a hard time letting go of her characters; didn't want the book to end.
The story's setting is in the U.K., during the late 1800's. I read this in the discussion section at the end, in the author's comments. I thought the story had taken place in the 1600-1700's. I enjoy reading historical fiction set in the US in the late 1800's. I did not recognize anything familiar to that era in this book, not the language, not the social history, and it seemed the tools and props were from an earlier time. I especially found the language "older" than what I'm used to reading in books set past midi century 1800's. Maybe it was because it was set in England. I'm not familiar with English history. I also t the author took liberties with historical eras and facts.
I do think she did some research on the River Thames, and on the interesting pieces of the history of photography.
There were many interesting parts of this book--it was a charming tale. I liked the good people of the story, and oh were the bad guys ever dastardly!! It just kept on... and on...and on! I read at the ending discussion section of that the book is to become a series on television. That makes sense, I suppose. It will take a lot of episodes to get all the story told if everything is to be included.
I don't mind long stories or 500+ page books if the length is necessary. I think in this book, the ends should have been wrapped up sooner, more succinctly.
I don't think I read reviews of this book before I bought it. I happened upon the sample first and became hooked. Ironically, it was the quick paced storytelling that drew me in. Perhaps the reviews would have warned me the pace drags out before the halfway point. If I consider another book by this author, I will read reviews first.
17 people found this helpful
Report