Once Upon a River

Everything about this literary novel captures my imagination, from the beautiful language to the quirky characters and atmospheric setting. It feels as if I’ve stepped into a fairytale with a mystery at the heart of it: a mysterious child has shown up at the local pub, and as the book unspools, we discover the secrets of the town and eventually the secret of the missing girl. 

The Armstrongs, Daunt, and Rita are characters as real as any people I know. Part of me still stays in the village of Radcot and wants to share stories at the local pub, The… show more.

Diane Setterfield’s book brings us magic, ghosts, resurrection, and redemption. A child, dead for hours, returns to life in a dark pub on the Thames, setting off a chain of mysteries, revelations, and claims to her present life and her future.

With a generous cast of equally intriguing characters, the author reaches into each individual heart—exploring despair, grief, resignation, victimization, hope, love, and human possibility. The main character is the Thames itself—moody, dangerous, prone to flooding and destruction, and embedded in the human consciousness.

This is my favorite (so far) of her novels, filled with rich prose, unforgettable imagery, and… show more.

The story sets a bucolic scene with eerie and mystical undertones. The river seems to have a personality of its own. Who is the girl, dead but then alive?

I couldn’t put it down; just had to find out the end of the story. Each of the characters is so well drawn that you want the best for them and when, on occasion it does, it is so satisfying.

This novel is, in a word, stunning. Its central theme is the Thames River with its complex mysteries. The various plotlines filter out from that theme in clever ways. It is rich with folklore, superstitions, and a fair amount of the supernatural. A heavy vein of the mysterious is woven throughout until the very end. The fascinating characters are not easily forgotten.

This lyrical dream of a novel celebrates storytelling, itself, which is the specialty of The Swan, a 19th-century inn that might exist in a village somewhere along the Thames. Under the guiding voice of an unnamed narrator, readers are invited into The Swan to hear separate tales of individual characters within the ensemble cast. Those many tales gradually flow together into one. Distinct voices rise and converge into a single choral piece interconnecting lives affected by loss and death, healing and rebirth. Some readers, myself included, may find themselves adding their own voices to the procession of stories within stories… show more.