The River by Tricia Wastvedt reviewed by Red Kite Reading Group.

This book provoked a very lively discussion, in that we all had differing views upon the plot, characters and the way in which the story is put together.  We agreed on some aspects, for example in the quality of the writing which earned unanimous praise from the group. 

The plot is a complicated interweaving of the lives and relationships of a group of people living in a sleepy Devon village on the banks of a river.  The story involves a tragic accident involving two children who drown in the river and the consequences for their parents and the members of a small village community.  This develops when Anna, a young pregnant woman running away from a relationship with a man who does not know that he is soon to be a father, moves there and is initially unaware of these events.

The characters themselves are a mixed bunch: the kindly local doctor, the tall grey-haired lady who runs everything in the village, the man who lives in her garden, a French couple who wander in quite by chance, and Sarah a free spirit. Somewhere in the story is Constance and Lydia and we were not quite sure of their role in the story.  We discussed these and other characters like Sarah, Elaine and Frank who were described in such detail. Anna, heavily pregnant and wanting to leave London and her former life, sticks her pin into the map of Devon and hits upon Cameldip.  In so doing she unwittingly seals her fate as she enters the muddy waters of the lives of those who live there.

We mostly thought that the characters are well drawn, with beautifully sketched detail from their daily lives.  The ripple of effects from the aftermath of the tragedy is fascinating as the story unfolds.  The eventual breakdown of Isabel, which forms the central theme of the book, is well described, and was described by one reader to be as gripping as any thriller.

The river itself is an important aspect of the novel and swirls its way through the story, sometimes low, broad, slowly moving, offering coolness in the summer heat, but other times moving faster, higher, dragging branches from trees, offering danger in its sheer force. The river itself is also a metaphorical image - under the surface of their seemingly idyllic lives lurk the dangers of past events that have affected everyone, but have been pushed down into the mutual subconscious like the mud at the bottom of the river. Thus, when Anna goes to live with Isabel, and gives birth to her child, she stirs up the mud and the resulting events have consequences for all concerned.

The novel contains a series of flashbacks, which introduce characters that come to the village and so enter the story. The book starts with the tragic deaths of the children, the central event, which has affected everyone so deeply. But it is up to the readers to piece together the story, work out the relationships, and put the events into the right order, and we felt that by using this method the author is quite demanding of our time and energy. We thought that the book would benefit from a second reading, however, when this method of flashbacks could be more greatly understood. 

We mostly agreed that the detailed descriptions of events and situations were enjoyable in that they gave a feeling of ‘being there’. The descriptions themselves evoke the river, the heat of that summer day, the cold of the journey in the snow, the relationship between the baby and his mother, even the feelings of the drowning children are very graphic. Through this description one reader saw sinister undertones in the story that the rest of us did not see. Whilst the rest of us were basically sympathetic to the mental condition of Isabel and the traumas which had been papered over both by her and by the community around her, this reader saw that she and her husband are disturbed characters and the community were equally to blame by closing around her and not reporting her mental state and deterioration to someone who could do something about it. 

Catherine Clarke
Red Kite Reading Group