Rivers and Races
Feb. 7th, 2020 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearOnce Upon A River by Dian Setterfield is a gorgeous book. It's long and immersive and meandering (a bit like a river!), and beautifully constructed and written. It has a folk take type atmosphere, which I normally find off-putting, but the throughline theme of storytelling and the ways in which stories travel and change over time (a bit like a river!) is very effective.
The setting is brilliantly evoked and the range of characters is both wide and appealing. Even someone who only turns up for a half-page random encounter has a distinct character and interesting features to them. The setup of the plot (a child is pulled from the river, thought to be dead, but lives and then is claimed by more than one family) is evocative and compelling, and the way everything gradually connects together and forms strands of an eventually cohesive whole is masterful and mostly very satisfying.
The writing is richly descriptive and all the background information is woven in so that it doesn't slow the progress of the plot.
The effects of events on the various characters are fully explored - particularly in terms of Helena, whose daughter was kidnapped two years before and who may now have been returned (I love the fact that her experience of that loss colours her actions and attitudes to current story events so deeply) and Rita, the nurse who is afraid of pregnancy after attending at many births.
There's a fantastic subplot about a pig, which is beautifully drawn and becomes brilliantly significant to the main plotline. And the romance subplot between Rita and the photographer who initially pulled the child out of the river is very well done throughout most of the book, in a complex and layered way.
The storytelling feels very assured, and I had confidence that the author knew exactly where she was going and that she would lead me to a very satisfying conclusion. This was not entirely borne out, however - towards the very end, there is suddenly a multi-page bady guy monologue to explain half the plot, followed almost immediately by a multi-page good guy monologue to explain the other half of the plot, which was a bit disappointing after the way all the disparate events had been interwoven up to that point.
I also wasn't entirely convinced by either the potentially supernatural explanation or the proposed rational explanation for who the child was and where she came from/went, though I liked that it wasn't made clear either way.
And I was unhappy with how the romance between Rita and Daunt ended up. She was adamant throughout about not wanting to bear children, and he was keen to have children. And there's a wonderful moment partway through, which reads as follows:
"Rita couldn't have made her feelings about the matter plainer, and though he had been surprised - he had seen her tenderness towards the girl, assumed too much - he knew he would be doing her an injustice to try to make her change her mind. Her knowledge of her own mind was what he admired about her. To expect her to bend to his wishes would be to expect her to be other than herself. No, she would not change, so he must."
I cheered out loud at this passage and was delighted by the sentiment and where I hoped it would lead for them. And then they got together at the end and had a baby together, with very little explanation as to why Rita would have changed her stance, which upset me a lot.
However, overll, this is a wonderful book, which is beautifully written, and which I was eager to get back to every time I had to put it down. Highly recommended.
And now I have a guilty pleasure to admit to - though I wholly disagree with the idea of feeling guilty about the media you enjoy!
Towards the beginning of December, I finally got around to giving RuPaul's Drag Race a try. And, as of today, I have watched all sixteen seasons (11 main, 4 all-stars, 1 UK) in the space of just over two months. I pretty much haven't watched anything else, and it's going to be very weird to go back to watching a range of fictional shows after so long obsessing over one thing.
At the start, I was watching mostly for the runways at the end of each episode. The creativity on display and the anticipation of how the contestants would interpret the various themes was the real draw for me. But, gradually, I got sucked into the drama and the competition aspects, until I was wholly immersed in every aspect of the show.
As reality TV, it's incredibly well constructed and very manipulative. You can see how it's been edited and put together to provide character arcs, conflict plotlines, and orchestrated melodrama. But I found myself grabbed and pulled along regardless, not caring that my emotions were being played like a violin.
Roll on Season Twelve!
The setting is brilliantly evoked and the range of characters is both wide and appealing. Even someone who only turns up for a half-page random encounter has a distinct character and interesting features to them. The setup of the plot (a child is pulled from the river, thought to be dead, but lives and then is claimed by more than one family) is evocative and compelling, and the way everything gradually connects together and forms strands of an eventually cohesive whole is masterful and mostly very satisfying.
The writing is richly descriptive and all the background information is woven in so that it doesn't slow the progress of the plot.
The effects of events on the various characters are fully explored - particularly in terms of Helena, whose daughter was kidnapped two years before and who may now have been returned (I love the fact that her experience of that loss colours her actions and attitudes to current story events so deeply) and Rita, the nurse who is afraid of pregnancy after attending at many births.
There's a fantastic subplot about a pig, which is beautifully drawn and becomes brilliantly significant to the main plotline. And the romance subplot between Rita and the photographer who initially pulled the child out of the river is very well done throughout most of the book, in a complex and layered way.
The storytelling feels very assured, and I had confidence that the author knew exactly where she was going and that she would lead me to a very satisfying conclusion. This was not entirely borne out, however - towards the very end, there is suddenly a multi-page bady guy monologue to explain half the plot, followed almost immediately by a multi-page good guy monologue to explain the other half of the plot, which was a bit disappointing after the way all the disparate events had been interwoven up to that point.
I also wasn't entirely convinced by either the potentially supernatural explanation or the proposed rational explanation for who the child was and where she came from/went, though I liked that it wasn't made clear either way.
And I was unhappy with how the romance between Rita and Daunt ended up. She was adamant throughout about not wanting to bear children, and he was keen to have children. And there's a wonderful moment partway through, which reads as follows:
"Rita couldn't have made her feelings about the matter plainer, and though he had been surprised - he had seen her tenderness towards the girl, assumed too much - he knew he would be doing her an injustice to try to make her change her mind. Her knowledge of her own mind was what he admired about her. To expect her to bend to his wishes would be to expect her to be other than herself. No, she would not change, so he must."
I cheered out loud at this passage and was delighted by the sentiment and where I hoped it would lead for them. And then they got together at the end and had a baby together, with very little explanation as to why Rita would have changed her stance, which upset me a lot.
However, overll, this is a wonderful book, which is beautifully written, and which I was eager to get back to every time I had to put it down. Highly recommended.
And now I have a guilty pleasure to admit to - though I wholly disagree with the idea of feeling guilty about the media you enjoy!
Towards the beginning of December, I finally got around to giving RuPaul's Drag Race a try. And, as of today, I have watched all sixteen seasons (11 main, 4 all-stars, 1 UK) in the space of just over two months. I pretty much haven't watched anything else, and it's going to be very weird to go back to watching a range of fictional shows after so long obsessing over one thing.
At the start, I was watching mostly for the runways at the end of each episode. The creativity on display and the anticipation of how the contestants would interpret the various themes was the real draw for me. But, gradually, I got sucked into the drama and the competition aspects, until I was wholly immersed in every aspect of the show.
As reality TV, it's incredibly well constructed and very manipulative. You can see how it's been edited and put together to provide character arcs, conflict plotlines, and orchestrated melodrama. But I found myself grabbed and pulled along regardless, not caring that my emotions were being played like a violin.
Roll on Season Twelve!
