I fell in love with this book the minute I began. Set on the River Thames in Victorian times the story meanders and swirls like the River itself through a community of people living close and on it's banks.
Many books have been set on the Thames in London. This one is set 25 miles from the source in Kemble, Gloucestershire. The author weaves this mystery descriptively. The story begins in The Swan public house, a storytelling pub in Radcot on the winter solstice. The door bursts open and an injured man staggers in holding a little girl who is dead but comes alive. Three people claim her as their own, but who is she really and where does she come from? The girl is unable to speak and the three claimants seem to have a genuine reasons for thinking her theirs.
The 500 page novel spans a whole year in this community as everything unfolds. There is kidnap, love, murder, intrigue as well as poverty and deep sadness. It's all here as we accompany the lives of the main family groups. There is a map of the Thames from Cricklade to Oxford, and I have walked some sections of this river from Reading to Pangbourne (and from Staines through London to Erith in Kent) and other odd stretches like Cookham in Berkshire and Gravesend in Kent. It is a river I love and one day I hope to finish the whole pathway from end to end. I've never walked so high up this river, yet I feel I know it as the author takes you there. The stories, the myths all weave into you along with the tributaries that feed into the Thames.
I loved this books so much I've bought another book of Diane Setterfield's. Once upon a River is cleverly weaved together and will stay with me for a long time.
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