Book Review: Once Upon a River By Diane Setterfield

My Rating:

4.5⭐️

“A river no more begins at its source than a story begins with the first page.”

In 1887, on the night of the winter solstice, an injured man stumbles into The Swan, an ancient inn in Radcot on the banks of the Thames River with the lifeless body of a young child. Presumed dead and confirmed to have no pulse by the local nurse Rita, everyone in the inn is shocked when the little girl regains consciousness. The man who brought her in, photographer Henry Daunt confirms that the child is not his and that he found her body floating in the river. The child is unable to speak and therefore, her identity and parentage remain a mystery. Thus, it is in The Swan, where patrons "went for storytelling" while enjoying their drinks, that the story of the intriguing events that follow the mysterious appearance of this little girl is set in motion.

“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.”

Who is this little girl? Who does she belong to and how did she end up in the river? Three families come forward to claim her – the wealthy Vaughan family whose daughter was kidnapped two years ago, a farming family patriarch Robert Armstrong who suspects that the child is his grandchild from his stepson whose shady dealings are a cause for concern, and Lily White, the widowed housekeeper of the local parsonage who thinks the child is her younger sister. As the narrative progresses, we see how this little girl impacts not only the lives of all those who lay claim to her and but also those who bear witness to the events that gradually unfold. There are several characters whose stories are integral to the narrative. But the author’s fluid prose and consistent pacing do not make it difficult to follow the multiple threads and I loved how all of it comes together in the end.

The author does a magnificent job of establishing the River at the center of the novel with each of the threads masterfully woven around it. With its vivid imagery and elements of fantasy, folklore and magical realism, Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield is an atmospheric and immersive novel that I thoroughly enjoyed and found hard to put down.

“It is a good thing to be solo on the river. There is freedom. You are neither in one place nor the other, but always on the move, in between. You escape everything and belong to no one.”