I finished reading this half an hour ago and have that bittersweet feeling that goes with the end of a wonderful book.  This is my first five star reads of the year, and last year I only had two out of 92 books as I save them for something really special.

The story is set on the Thames river between London and Oxford centred around the Swan Inn, which like all good pubs, is the hub of the community.  On the longest night of the year, a stranger enters the Swan, dripping wet with his face all battered holding what looks at first to be a doll.  He hands the doll to somebody and then collapses.  The doll turns out to be a child, around 4 years old, not breathing, presumed dead.  Rita the nurse is sent for to attend to the man and the body of the child is put out in the cold summer room.  A while later, Rita notices that the child is now breathing.  Is it a miracle?

But who is the child?  Three parties turn up the next day claiming that the child could be theirs.  The Vaughans, a wealthy family whose two-year-old daughter was kidnapped and despite the ransom demand being paid, their child was never found.  Mr Armstrong a man whose granddaughter is missing presumed drowned and Lily White, a "simple" woman whose sister went missing many years ago.

So many wonderful characters, and at times it seems a little like a fairytale.  The good are very good and the bad are very bad but they are all utterly human and believable.  My favourite has to be Rita, the nurse as I am also nurse also I guess feel a certain kinship.  In many ways, she is a doctor and treated like one, but she is a woman and it's the year 1787,  so nurse as good as she can get.

Henry Daunt, the man who rescued the child from the river, is a photographer, who is based on the historical figure of Henry Taunt who is famed for photographing the Thames extensively and took 53000 photos of the area using the wet collodion process, an early form of photography.

The pacing was a bit slow at times.  The book starts well, but then it does seem to drift off a bit and I think the few folks that didn't finish it did so around the 15% mark,  it really does seem to pick up again and become much more engaging a little while after that, so stick with it, it is worth it, trust me.   The bonus of the slower pacing is that we have the time to savour the beautifully descriptive writing.

This is a quirky, atmospheric tale with touches of Gothic in its local legends and strange goings-on. Set in the mid-Victorian era, the story begins on the winter solstice, when day turns quickly into night. Men and women are packed into The Ship Inn, in the village of Radcot on the banks of the Thames, where story-telling is a speciality. Little do they know that a real life legend is about to unfold, bringing fame to the village, heartbreak to some and joy to others.

A badly-injured man bursts into the inn, carrying a small, lifeless girl. The man is photographer Henry Daunt (based on a real-life photographer with a similar name), but the girl's identity is a mystery. While both gain strength, they remain in the Ship Inn, to be cared for by nurse/midwife Rita Sunday and the large and bustling Bliss family, innkeepers to the Ship.

Many people want to claim the girl as theirs: strong and kindly farmer Robert Armstrong; his errant son Robin; childless nurse Rita, hapless Lily White and the wealthy young Vaughans, whose own daughter was abducted two years previously. While Robert Armstrong, Henry Daunt and Rita Sunday are sympathetic and believable, others such as Robin Armstrong and Lily White could have stepped straight out of a Victorian melodrama. Indeed, there are so many interesting characters that it takes a while to fix them all in your head.

This is a tale of contradictions: good and evil, superstition and science, belonging and not fitting in: a time when photography was new, Darwinism controversial and railways for city people. Life was slow when you could travel only as far as your feet, a horse or a boat would take you; most people lived in the same village all their lives.

Just as the moors are a feature of the Bronte novels, so the Thames dominates this story: a means of travel, source of sustenance for people, animals and crops but deadly in flood or darkness. It's a time when country people still believed in ancient myths from Quietly the ferryman (who rescues drowning people if it's not their time to die) to the Cricklade Dragons and changeling children. Indeed, it is little details, like Downs Syndrome boy Jonathan Bliss being taken for a changeling faerie child that make the book for me.

Sections of the story have the brooding atmosphere of Wuthering Heights others the psychological realism of A Woman in White. There is lightness, compassion and humour too. My only complaint is that the ending was almost too tidy. Everything was resolved. I would have liked to see just one thread left dangling.

Good to see pigs featured as it's the Year of the Pig from 5 Feb! For fans of Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, the Brontes, Dickens or atmospheric modern fiction such as Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent and Melmoth.

Going by the blurb and the gushing reviews I’ve seen, I had high expectations for this book.

While I enjoyed the lyrical and beautiful prose, I could not get into the story and found my interest declining the further I read.

DNF at 11%. It just was wasn’t for me.

Thank you to Diane Setterfield, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Settlefield is a masterful storyteller and Once Upon a River, again demonstrates her prowess. If you liked her previous two novels this will also please. A young girl is recovered from a the Thames, apparently dead, but some time later is found to be alive. Three people believe they know the girl and have a claim on her.. This sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale or a legend and the books does have an mythic quality to it, where the characters are both realistic but otherworldly. Folklore and superstition is woven through the narrative and nothing will surprise the reader. A very pleasurable read. A beautifully written tale and a pleasure to read.

https://lynns-books.com/2019/01/14/once-upon-a-river-by-diane-setterfield/
4.5 of 5 stars
Once Upon a River was one of my most anticipated reads for 2019. This is my third book by this author and frankly I find her a storyteller of unusual depth and charm. Her books have an almost ‘old quality’ and I find myself reading them with a powerful sense of nostalgia that takes me back to a time when my gran used to tell me and my sister old tales, some seemed to come straight out of her own imagination, some would be familiar, but those were times that we both loved and still hanker after. Once Upon a River has a beautiful fairytale feel that evokes times of old and tells the story of an ancient inn where people still come to share stories over a jug or two of beer.

As the story begins the regulars of the Swan Inn are exchanging yarns when the door bursts open and in steps a man carrying a child, the two of them drenched and clearly the victims of an accident of some sort. At first appearance the drinkers, maybe due to the drink, mistake the child for a puppet, her skin is so pale and waxy, and they focus their attention on the injuries sustained by the man until the innkeeper’s son realises this isn’t a puppet at all but a little girl of maybe 4 years. The local nurse is called for who, in no nonsense fashion, sets about attending to the man’s injuries. Meanwhile the body of the little girl is placed out of the way – it’s too late to treat her injuries, no pulse, dilated pupils and waxy skin tell their own tale. And yet, something bothers the nurse, a nagging doubt that drives her to check the little girl once again and discover that she isn’t dead after all. Mistake or miracle – the story is about to begin and their will be plenty of hypothesising and embroidering along the way.

I’m not going to elaborate further on the plot in this review. This is a mystery story with a historic feel that uses folklore, superstition and magical realism to drive the tale forwards.

There are quite a number of characters involved. We have a young couple who have suffered a terrible loss and are unable to drag themselves out of the depths of despair, we have a young girl who lives a strange existence on a remote spit of land along the Thames, we have a charismatic farmer and his family who seem to live a charmed life but for their oldest son who seems to be going astray somewhat, and we have the nurse, who long ago decided not to marry and bear children, having seen only too often the price paid in childbirth, however, that was before she found herself with a would be suitor in the form of the local photographer (who coincidentally was the injured man from the start of the story who has become fixated with the nurse who tended him). Finally, the young girl whose miraculous recovery sparked stories to spread like wildfire up and down the banks of the Thames. Everyone seems to be drawn to this young girl, she is an enigma, she hasn’t spoken since her recovery and her melancholy air draws people to her like a flame draws the moth. They want to look after her, make her smile, but she remains aloof, unhappy and desperately attracted to the river that almost took her life.

The setting has a period feel although I’m not sure if an actual year was mentioned. References to Darwin are made and the story has a Dicken’s feel in terms of the style and feel. At times, there is a romantic, meandering, almost lyrical feel. The place evokes a bygone age of charm and simplicity and yet at other times this is countered by the darkness of human behaviour and the more seedy side of existence. I also loved the role that the Thames plays – at times twinkling innocently in spite of it’s deep and perilous currents, at other times shrouded in mist and mystery. It almost takes on the persona of another character, sometimes moody, sometimes playful but always a force to be reckoned with and never to be underestimated.

The writing is beautiful, the type of writing that you simply have to savour. This is not a book to be raced through although it is certainly a page turner. I was quite bewitched to be honest although at the same time I would say this is a slow burner and at times there was almost a point where I almost, almost, reached that stage where I wanted to move forward and stop dwelling on a certain point – thankfully the author always seemed to move on at just the right moment. However, be aware that this book definitely has the feel of an old style classic both in terms of the gentle pace and old fashioned sensibilities. Personally, it worked for me like a charm but I recognise that I have a love of tales of this nature where the setting and telling have less of a contemporary feel and more of a determination to spin a tale that lures you slowly and surely.

Overall, I loved this book and I don’t have any criticisms. My only caution to perspective readers would be that if you’re expecting a headlong rush through a mystery novel then this might not be the book for you. If you like the idea of a beautiful, adult fairytale, told in a desultory fashion that evokes bygone days where magic and miracles still seemed possible then what are you waiting for. An adult fairytales that manages to blend, history, mystery, folklore, religion and science and with all those things in the mix leaves you feeling ‘what if’.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

It’s midwinter in England, in the old Swan Inn on the banks of the Thames. Stories are being told by candlelight by the village locals. Suddenly, a man bursts through the doors, heavily beaten and holding what appears to be a doll. But when the villagers try to help him, they realise that he’s holding the body of a drowned girl. They lay her to rest in a room on her own but hours later – a miracle! – she stirs and seems to come back to life. So starts a tale of intrigue, deception and magic, heavily laden with folklore.

So far so good.

But when the entire book is based around who is the girl in an age when no-one could tell for sure, I felt like I was literally getting caught in the weeds.

Luckily, Once Upon A River is beautifully, magically written. The prose is lyrical, flowing, well… like a river. However, it also meanders about, with a huge cast of characters forming a number of slower moving tributaries that feed into the main narrative flow. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me but it took a while to understand. It also made the pace of the book s-l-o-w… really slow. Occasionally, the storyline was so stagnant I thought we’d veered off course into an oxbow lake. The gorgeous writing just about managed to pull me through the silt though.

The book is also incredibly atmospheric. I could literally see the characters (there’s pages and pages of descriptive text) even though they’re numerous and somewhat similar. Combined with the writing style this made the novel far more engaging but after a while, instead of gliding effortlessly through the prose I felt like I was drowning in it. I got somewhat swamped by the side stories and exhausted by the sense that I was treading water, waiting for the next thing to happen.

Oddly, the narrative picked up pace towards the end – to the point of feeling a little rushed – which I found quite jarring. I didn’t fully understand the ending (I sensed some kind of moral message but couldn’t quite decipher it) although I appreciated how the author tied all of the narrative threads together. I hated the idea that getting married and having a baby would make everything better though.

Overall, this was a very difficult book to review. I can completely see why some people (a lot of people) have given it five stars – it’s an easy book to immerse yourself in. However, I struggled with the slow pace and the lack of action. Whilst I quite enjoyed reading Once Upon A River, I didn’t love it – but I’m sure plenty of other people will.

*I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

From briefly skimming others reviews I see that Diane Setterfield seems to have a knack for captivating readers, and I was definitely one of those drawn in. Having not read anything by the author before I wasn't quite sure what I was getting going in. For the first 25% or so, I was captivated. Could not stop reading. But after that, I struggled a tad with by attention being solely on the book. It's definitely a slow-burn kind of story, and one I appreciate reading and enjoyed in the end slowing down my binging habits. By the end, I was so so glad I read this book, and it's one I can see myself recommending to others if they enjoy a slow place.

A mysterious injured stranger staggers into the Swann Inn carrying what looks like a doll in his arms. The doll is in fact a child who appears to have drowned in the river Thames, but then miraculously come back to life. Three families claim her as their own, but who is she really?

This book, the first I have read by Diane Setterfield, is beautifully written and filled with magic, mystery and folklore. The characters are intricately detailed and the landscapes were beautifully described. However I did find the pace a little slow and in the end I got a little bored with the story. It was a little like the river Thames – long and meandering!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I have been telling all my friends to read this book. If it had been published fifty ago it would be a classic. It ought to be on A level lists to show students how beautiful good writing can be. It combined an intriguing story line with wonderful description of life beside the Thames as it once was. It managed to turn a tragic story line into a most happy and uplifting conclusion. The evocation of the river is so strong and pervading that I was worried that it would leave a cascade of water from my bookshelf.

Once Upon a River

Alice, Ann or Amelia. Everyone claims the fey, elfin child - but do they really know her?

The river Thames winds inexorably through the centre of this novel, drawing together the good, the not-so-good and the downright wicked characters into a gripping story. And it is like a story, not a novel - it draws on the oral narrative tradition, a story about story telling. About lies and truths and how they can affect our perception of life around us.

Diane Setterfield is clearly a skilled writer, I found her descriptive prose evocative and enticing. She was able to create a real sense of a time and place that was inherently believable - the references to the daily lives of the characters, the photographic process, midwifery, nursing and the new science of Darwin - all helped to create this feeling.

I also found little to disappoint in the characters. In fact, I was left wanting to know even more about them. The women in particular I felt were well created. In Lily White, the brutality of Victorian Britain and its treatment of women, pitched against the strength of Bess, Rita and Margot - each dealing with their own difficulties. The men varied from heroic to the downright villainous - but all with reasons and motivations that rung true.

All in all, I would recommend this book as a book that will draw you in and submerge you in its world.

Once Upon a River is beautifully written! The descriptions of the flowing and life of the river are absolutely gorgeous and lyrical. I loved to read about the different kinds of people whose lifes change during the course of an evening. It magically weaves together stories of loss, pain, love and hope and leaves you with a pleasantly saturated feeling.

There have been tons of positive reviews that I have read about this book in the past few months, but none of them could have prepared me (thankfully) for the ride that it was. If taken apart as bare bones the tale may not bear up and therefore I shall not try to do that. It is how the tale is told that is its claim to beauty and something higher. The narration appeals to both my mind and heart and it felt like I was flowing with that river that is ingrained into everything that is talked about in the book. There is a double meaning for all the people, their actions and the events that includes the mention of the river and I got it. To those who read, this might be a very crucial point, that you feel like you can see the point the author is trying to make.

As I began the first chapter and the town was introduced, I paused and had to catch hold of the person standing nearest to me (luckily it was my mother) to read out the introductory paragraph to show her how stories are meant to be written. She nodded the appreciation and that was enough for me. I went back to my corner to read it. Since I was mid journey(in reality), it took me a while to finish. I deliberately slowed down my reading pace so that I could savour it. This is a very big deal for me as most people who know me would understand, I fidget if I would have to read a book too slowly. This book leaves no room for fidgeting. The story begins with a tale, and the arrival of almost dead pair of (possibly)strange people. Their arrival heralds a very big change in all their lives, most of them good but a secret festers. This secret is slowly peeled aside as each layer is explained to us till it all makes sense. Some of it is pure logic and a chunk of it requires us to believe in a bit of something beyond logic. Time is suspended as you get involved in the lives of all the villagers, a few vital to the story at hand a few others just to give us the colour of the landscape. 

I highly recommend this book to all those who strive to find beautiful narration in the books that they read.

Setterfield is a master storyteller. Her words are mesmerising and the characters and story are an intriguing and captivating mix of folklore, mystery and provincial English nosy gossiping neighbours. A delightful and enchanting tale. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to be accepted to read and review 'Once upon a River' by Netgalley and I was elated to finally start reading. Within the first few pages I was fully swept up in the magic... However, a few more and all magic was lost. You're introduced to many different characters - most who really aren't of any significance to the story, but all of which had really LONG descriptive pieces about them and their life. The book flitted between this characters every few pages, and while I usually find short chapters are easier to blitz through a whole book.. this one dragged. It was an incredibly long slow burner.

Usually I can read 400+ pages in two days (with work etc) but this one took me nearly a week, and in all honesty -I had to force myself to pick it up - in some places I must admit I did skim through just to be finished quicker. While the plot was intriguing, I feel like this book would have benefit from being much shorter. The beginning and the end were great - and it was well written. But more suited to someone who likes to savour every single detail. If you like action/drama then this probably isn't the book for you.

This is a beautiful and magical tale. The language gives it a haunting feel which lives with you, even after you finish reading. There are many well defined characters, and a mystery, but, for me the best part is the evocative and gentle atmosphere of the whole book.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC

My first book by Setterfield, but it won't be my last, very well written and I really loved how the story flowed and I was very intrigued by the plot. It was a bit iffy in the middle but otherwise it did keep me engaged and I was happy with the conclusion.

I'm a huge fan of Diane Setterfield - I've read her previous books 'The Thirteenth Tale' and 'Bellman & Black' and thoroughly enjoyed them both. This new novel is no exception. I highly recommend it.

The story is set in the 1800s, and centers around 2 things - the Thames and all its tributaries, especially those running through Oxford where it's set - and the mystery of a young girl drowned in the river and then come back to life. Much of the action is set in The Swan Inn, where the regulars and landlord are known for their wonderful storytelling - hence the title Once Upon a River.

Who is this young girl who has been carried into the Swan in the arms of a local photographer? What was she doing in the river, and how did he find her? And how is it she suddenly comes back to life? We follow 3 families who say she belongs to them, but who are we to believe? And why does the child no longer speak?

I loved everything about this book - the feel of magic, witchcraft, and folklore that permeates through the storytelling; the wonderful characters who spring to life from the pages; the flow of the tale that pulls you along like the undercurrent of a fast-flowing river. It's such a wonderful read, and I was so sad to have finished it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK and Diane Setterfield for an advanced
I can't lie, I very much struggled with this book at the start. The complexity and array of characters at the beginning almost had me putting this in the DNF pile.
However I am so glad that I stuck with it. What a truly wonderful and captivating story. This book is so full of magic and heart it brings you back to the wonders of fairy tales as a child. Each characters' story is brought together to end in stunning fruition.

I cannot recommend this book enough! So well written and it kept me wanting to read on to find out more! Loved the style of writing. I would love a sequel please!
#onceuponariver #netgalley

A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child. Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life.

Is it a miracle?, Is it magic? Or can it be explained by science?

Who is this little girl? To whom does she belong? Where is she from? How is she connected to the wounded man? No one can find out any answers, especially because the little girl is mute and cannot provide any information. But of course, that doesn't stop those from near and far from inventing stories that explain her situation. And while fictions grow and become more elaborate, there are three families who believe the little girl belongs to them, and each has a complicated story about how they know this to be so, stories as twisted as the Thames itself.

I have read nothing quite like Once Upon a River. A modern fairy tale? Quite a bit of suspense and mystery and wonder. We mix folklore, with storytelling, and a mystery with some magical happenings. We meet some people who have had tragedy in their lives, all with their own stories and how this young girl fit into them. A delicious gothic novel.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld Punishing for an advance copy in return for a fair and honest review.