Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
“Thereafter the hours were very long, and very short. While the water lay unperturbed and indifferent all around, the women at the Swan were engaged in the human pursuits of dying and being born. On one side of the wall Helena struggled to deliver her baby into life. On the other side, Joe struggled to depart it. The little Margots got on with everything that needed to be done so that life could begin and so that it could be ended. They carried water and clean cloths, filled log baskets and stoked fires, lit candles, made plates of food that nobody had an appetite for but ate anyway out of good sense, and all the while they did those things they also wept and soothed and calmed and comforted.”
I read this book with delight and also with a shoulders hunched ‘where is she going with this’ attitude. I knew as soon as I started it that much of my enjoyment would depend on the end of the story and the growth of one character in particular.
This book is quite cozy. It meanders just like a river, sometimes quick and intense, other times it broadens and slows. There are safe shallows and dangerous undercurrents. This book is also self-aware. It’s about storytelling and how stories are shared within a community until they become part of the loam that everyone grows in. It is about how storytellers craft stories. Rivers and stories flow through this book and weave it together.
This book is a slow burn. It takes its time. It is as much about the feel of the words as it is about what happens. Don’t read it expecting a high-action tale. Don’t expect a swift opening. This book builds slowly until it is a rushing flood at the end. And, as with all of Setterfield’s books, it has some dark themes: abuse, death, murder, families broken, and intimacy as both a beautiful and hurtful thing. Setterfield doesn’t bathe in the dark things, but she does employ them. Unlike The Thirteenth Tale, which is like a Gothic Romance in its style, this is more like a fairytale.
What I enjoyed about this book, beyond the absolutely beautiful writing, was the women. There was such a range of women in this book all doing feminine things. No warrior women to be seen, only real women doing real women things.
Margot was a large woman who ran the inn in the book. Her husband is a storyteller and she has many daughters all like her. She is the kind of woman I think all of us long to know. Smart, dedicated, a giver of good hugs, and a good cook. She has a son who is disabled and a husband who is physically weak and sick, but she tends to all of them with great wisdom and love. She’s just wonderful.
Helena is the lost mother. She’s the vivacious outdoors girl who can row a boat as well as a man and isn’t afraid of the river, but she’s lost when her daughter is kidnapped. She is such a wonderful picture of motherhood and wifeness. Her story is heartbreaking and yet I felt so drawn to this character. Her imagination and wholehearted love of her family made me so happy even when I was crying over her agony.
Lily is the abused, down-trodden woman that we spend the book begging someone, anyone, to see her and save her. She is burdened by her past and held captive by an abusive man. Her story was one of great sadness.
Bess, who might be my favorite of all the characters, is a mother of 7. She’s married to the only black man in town. She’s deformed and wears a patch over one eye that matches her dress. She lives on a farm and her relationship with her husband, and his goodness as a man, is the bulwark of hope within the story. They’re the family you find solace in when all the other things are dark. Her husband is the one you want to set everything right because you trust him to know what right actually is. Bess has some magical abilities and I want to not only go live in her home, but I want to take her character and run with it. She is a woman who has endured much, suffered much, and never stopped loving or serving or managing her home. She’s prudent and courageous.
Rita is the character that grows the most in the story and was the one I knew my overall appreciation for the book depended on. I’m going to give some spoilers here, sorry. Stop reading if you’re already convinced you need this book. You have been warned. Rita is a nurse who has served as a midwife for much of her life. Her mother died in childbirth and she has witnessed woman after woman destroyed bringing their babies into the world. She wants nothing to do with being a mother. She plans on never getting married and never getting pregnant because she is afraid. What I wanted out of this story was for her to overcome her fear for the sake of the love of her child. And you know what? She did. She had this moment where she sat beside a wounded man listening to him breathe and held a magical child in her arms and wished it was hers. It was such a beautiful perfect family moment, the tending of the man and the holding of the child. If this woman didn’t have a family, didn’t overcome her fear by the end of the book I was going to toss it in a burn pile. I was not disappointed. I was not left feeling like fear was greater than love, and that infertility and singleness were wiser than love, home, and family. My heart is still rejoicing. I keep thinking back over this book because it did exactly what I wanted it to do and that served as an open door for exploring it. It could have slammed the door shut in my face by telling me this character chose the better path of aloneness.
If you are a sucker for books that wallow, swim, and soak in beautiful language, if you don’t need it to be a sprint from one point of action to another, if you love fairytales, and if you are willing to face dark things to get to the light at the end, I suggest Once Upon a River. Make some tea and snuggle in for a cozy read. Not necessarily safe, but cozy for sure. Oh, and you’ll want a pet pig by the end, too. And Robert Anthony might set your standards for men a little high, just be forewarned.
Rated PG-13: Has some adult situations, child death and endangerment, and familial abuse. Nothing is gratuitous, but it is there. There are some subtly feministic themes and a tiny reference to homosexuality, but nothing major enough to destroy the story.
