The River

by Tricia Wastvedt

Book Overview

Tricia Wastvedt's debut novel, met with critical acclaim in England, is a hypnotically readable portrait of a community scarred, but eventually reawakened, by its grief. Two children drown during the summer of 1958 in the English village of Cameldip. Their parents, Isabel and Robert, are bound together in guilt and anger, and as the years pass, the tragedy weaves itself into the invisible fabric of village life. Robert, finding solace in labor, builds...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802170072
• ISBN13: 9780802170071
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
• Length: 346 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Labyrinth

A dark, misty labyrinth of a book, The River tells about loss - loss of self and loss of loved ones through death, denial, rejection, misunderstanding, guilt, and violence. Each of the individual characters in the story are deeply affected by a single event, the accidental drowning of 2 children. While most of the villagers appear to have recovered from the traumatic deaths, under the surface the memories and ghosts of the lost children profoundly influence their choices, their relationships, and their daily lives, forever. Tricia Wastvedt's first novel is a masterful, atmospheric mystery written in a beautifully evocative style reminiscent of Daphne DuMaurier (Rebecca). The River is a distinctive, original, and haunting work of art.

You have him now, but in an hour - in two hours - he's mine

Wracked with grief and guilt, Robert and Isabel McKinnon blame themselves and each other for the death of their two young children Catherine and Jack in a boating accident. The catastrophe happened in the summer of 1958 while the children were playing in a leaky boat on a river that passes through the tranquil English village of Cameldip in the sleepy heart of Devon. For thirty years the tragedy has rippled outwards like pools in the river, gradually becoming part of the essential fabric of the town. Robert and Isabel continue to live next to each other maintaining an uneasy alliance fraught with sorrow, recrimination, and heartache. "He was responsible, his stupidity his neglect. Not only him - I was equally to blame." Neither have had the courage to let go and perhaps move on from the town and the river where misfortune irrevocably changed their lives. In 1987, Anna, a young, free-spirited girl wants to leave London so she sticks a pin into the map of Devon and hits upon Cameldip. Seeking refuge for herself and her unborn baby, she arrives and immediately falls in love with the idyllic little township. But in doing so doing she unwittingly seals her fate as she enters the muddy waters of the lives of those who live there. Taking up Isabel's offer for a place to stay, Anna sleeps in a tree house by Isabel's cottage, a tree house that was originally built by Robert when he first came to the village. As Anna begins to relax into a comfortable and contented life, she phones her boyfriend - who does not know that he is soon to a father - asking if he will drive down from London. After the child is born, Isabel gradually begins to take them Anna and baby Mathew under her wing. At first everything seems to be going well, but progressively Isabel becomes distracted and starts to confuse past and present and to treat Matthew as her own. She starts to call him Jack, takes him for walks, and lavishes attention on him without Anna's permission. Isabel becomes incensed and even more protective of Mathew, when Anna befriends Josef, a local man, who Isabel partly blames for the accident. Isabel is a vividly drawn character whose traumas have been papered over, both by her and by the community around her. She's a profoundly disturbed character who treats her anger as a relic, "a fragment that is broken off, displaced but still perfect, which she would unwrap from time to time." Her eventual breakdown, which forms the central theme of the book, is well described, and as gripping as any thriller. The community is probably equally to blame for closing around her and not reporting her mental state and deterioration. Over the years Robert tried to help, "but he said his lines for so long they were meaningless; what they made were a thread going back to the past." Isabel responds by saying "You wont get away from me you know." Form and content merge in this tale of many voices, which, like the river, meanders through the years and through the wreckage and