Firstly I want to thank the publishers for my free copy via Netgalley.

I didn't know what to expect from this book, the basis for my interest being rooted in the beautiful book design and that the story was based in the nineteenth century. What I made was a pleasant discovery - elegant writing that led me from place to place easily, from character to situation with anticipation and from my 21st century reading chair to the Swan Inn with stylistic prose.

The story is set in the Swan Inn where the man of the house is a raconteur of some notoriety when a man stumbles in with a drowned girl in his arms and promptly passes out from his injuries.

In the chapter called "Tributaries" the author gives such a winding description of the river it entices you along its banks as if you were blown across the top of the water like an iridescent dragonfly, with transparent wings conspicuous in their agility. This chapter is indicative of the writing throughout and I was overwhelmed by the literary nature of the tale.

Our characters are laid out for us like diagrams with spaces in between for the imagination to complete - imaginings of their daily lives, the controlled narrative of their life stories that they are compelled to follow - Inn keeper, gravel-digger, ferryman and the like.

There is no doubt this is an old fashioned story-telling with ingenious colourful ramblings, twists and turns and the fundamental mystery of the drowned girl brought back to life.

Highly recommend. Thanks again to Netgalley and the publishers Doubleday for my free ARC.

The River Thames flows through this tale weaving together characters, settings and plot points. Beautifully written in story-telling style, magic and mystery sit side by side at the heart of this novel. The Thames, like the mythological Styx, forms a shifting boundary between life and death. In the end, death as the ultimate mystery remains unsolved, but the human psyche is navigable to its very depths. Set at the time of Darwin, the dawn of psychology and accessible photography, what had been intangible came within our reach and what had seemed magical became explainable - and so it is with this story.
Thanks go to the publishers and Netgalley for my ARC. Having started it, I loved it so much that I went out and bought my own copy to keep - now there's a wholehearted and unreserved recommendation!

During a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames, an injured man with a dead child are brought in from the river. The local healer is brought in and somehow, the dead child comes back to life.

This story had a poetic quality to the prose in the beginning redolent of a classic fairytale, yet the plot is totally original. I have to admit I wasn't sure what was going on for most of it. Is the child supernatural? Several people want to claim her, thinking it's a daughter or sister they lost. Perhaps an orphan child they might adopt. Somehow her features seem to appear familiar to all of them and each wants to take responsibility for her.

Eventually, towards the end, all is revealed and things begin to make sense, apart from the part that really is supernatural. It's a mystery story that moves at a slow pace, reflecting the effects of a slow moving river on the community that lives within the flood plain of its banks.

The only fast action is towards the end. This is one for the patient reader, and for those who like to spend most of the book working out the answer to a puzzling situation.

I DNFED this at 28%. I don’t mind magical but this weird blend of magical realism but maybe it is fantasy, yet we are not sure, well, it just did not work for me. I can understand that a lot of readers would like the meandering style of this narrative - oddly very much like the river described about 10% in that did not seem to have any set direction but somehow headed east. A case of “the right book for the wrong person” or “the wrong book for this reader”.

First of all, I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a charming little novel, which tells the story of a drowned girl miraculously restored to life and the stories told about her thereafter. There are quite a few threads to the story, as three different families lay claim to the girl and each bestow a different identity upon her, while the photographer who brought her out of the river and the nurse who witnessed her revival are also dragged into the story along the way. The prose is elegant, and the exploration of the nature of storytelling itself as a theme (always a favourite of mine) was interesting, but I felt as though the story never really kicked into gear, for me - the characters were likeable but mostly lacked character, and the pacing meandered like the titular river throughout. The way certain aspects of the story were handled - specifically, the ending of Rita's arc and the use of Robin as a character in general - also felt like a disparagement of any form of non-traditional families, whether that was the intention or not, and it left something of a sour taste in my mouth.

However, on the whole I did enjoy the novel - the threads of the central mystery were certainly intriguing, and came together in a satisfying conclusion; I just wasn't as engrossed by the novel as I'd hoped.

Wonderfully gothic with mystery, tragedy, and a whole many stories waiting to be told.
The atmosphere centering around the river is both comforting and chilling; the characters are at the mercy of the river waters but they are also as much a part of the river as they are the community. Every story within this tale is compelling, complex and emotive, you feel you know these characters and are one of the locals within the pub overhearing the drama but equally privy to the innermost fears and secrets.
I was captivated reading this wonderful book.

This is a strange meandering tale. Based along the banks of the river when a man and young girl are pulled half alive out of the river so many questions begin. The storytelling tradition of the local pub ramps up the mystery with tales of ghosts and beings who help the dead across the river.

Finding the identity of the silent girl is the mission of all involved. Is she Mr Armstrong's granddaughter believed drowned with her desperate mother? Is she the Vaughan family's missing child returned 2 years after a kidnapping? Or is she Lily's sister who has haunted Lilly for years? Also what of the man she was found with?

All the characters stories interweave and fall into place at the end. It's well done but it is a meandering, wandering tale.

This was such a pleasure to read. I loved the atmosphere the author created with rivers, rain and floods, old waterside inns, folk tales and unexplained mysteries. All just wonderful!

It is a book to read slowly and carefully because there are a lot of characters to keep track of and the author constantly drifts off into side stories which are all equally interesting and deserve constant attention. The story winds as much as the river it describes. The central tale is the mystery of the drowned child who is recovered from the river and whether she is Ann, Amelia or Alice, but so much more goes on beside.

Diane Setterfield writes beautifully and she creates the perfect historical feel to the characters and their way of life. There is magic in it too which fits in well - I loved the idea of Quietly, the boatman who rescues people from the river and helps them home unless it is "their time" when he will see them over to the other side.

A book I will remember and easily worth five stars.

Once upon a River by Diane Setterfield is a beautiful, magical, whimsical tale set in the 1900’s around the River Thames. I have seen a lot of good reviews about this book, I had to have a read.
The Swann Inn in Radcot is the famous for its storytelling and is where everyone goes. It’s a cold winters night. When suddenly, a man with a bloodied, injured face comes in carrying something, which everyone thinks is a doll. Only when they realise that is a body of small child. She has drowned in the river and is pronounced dead by the local nurse. Her body pale and lifeless. But, the girl stirs and becomes alive again. The whole town questions what happened to her and the man that brought her in to the inn. The story also includes The Armstrong’s and the Vaughan’s both think that the girl is the long lost daughter.
This is a first book from the author that I have read and I think this is a beautiful written book. If you are an historical and literary fan this is the book for you. I liked the premise of this story but, unfortunately for me I didn’t like any of the characters and I thought it rambled on far too long. There was nothing in the story that was engaging for me. I struggled with it and wanted it to end. 3 stars from me.

Diane Setterfield has written a beautiful ode to storytelling in her latest novel, ‘Once Upon a River’, in which the many moods of the flowing water are reflected in the collection of stories told by a rural Oxfordshire community. Throughout the novel, these tales try to explain not only the appearance of a wounded stranger at the local inn on the Thames – The Swan at Radcot - one evening, carrying a ‘large puppet, with waxen face and limbs and slickly painted hair’, but also the many ripples cast by this momentous event.
The ‘puppet’ is no less that a four-year-old girl, presumed dead, who returns to life. But who is she? Is she Alice or Amelia or someone else entirely? Just as a reader may interpret a story according to his or her own predilections, so do the Radcot villagers as they ponder the girl’s identity. Their beliefs tell us much more about their own states of mind than of the lost child’s origins.
The novel is set in the second half of the nineteenth century, a time of significant scientific development and also an era in which rural communities still clung to old beliefs and customs. The author’s creation of folk tales particular to the area reminds us that many in England still relied on the oral tradition, that story telling was a much-respected gift and that community life was all-important. And yet … progress is in the air. Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ has been published; the development of medical practice is moving swiftly; the art of photography is born. There is much to reflect on; the reader cannot help but contrast the inn’s opportunities for fellowship with the isolated life so many experience today.
Throughout the novel the river ebbs and flows, a character in its own right. The author has written about the Oxfordshire countryside most evocatively and the rural picture painted reminds me in some respects of another recently created Oxfordshire – that of Philip Pullman’s ‘La Belle Sauvage’. Both fictitious worlds allow the reader to become immersed in magical, mysterious yet tangible settings. In a stylistically apt manner, reminiscent of nineteenth century writers, Setterfield addresses the reader directly in the last paragraph of her novel, reminding us that we have come to the moment when we must now ‘cross the bridge’ to the real world. And so we do, albeit reluctantly.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

I loved this book. The characters were deep and not what I was expecting. The child found was fantastic - who DID she belong to and WHO IS SHE?

I loved the travelling photographer who became my favourite character...

So mysterious and makes me want to travel...

MUST READ!

Once Upon a River is set on the River Thames, and starts with a stormy winter solstice night, and a young girl being rescued from the river, and thought to be drowned, except she wakes up.

Three different people claim her to be their own, but she doesn't say anything, or act as though she recognises anyone. A couple whose daughter was kidnapped two years ago, a grandfather who hasn't ever seen his granddaughter, and a woman in her forties who recognises the girl as her sister. But who is she?

All of this, and the stories of Quietly, the ferryman who rescues people, whilst never stopping for rest himself.

This was such a thematic read, with the river ever present, that you could practically feel the dampness everyone spoke about in the book. I thought the characters were well filled, and the stories being told in the book were very good.

This has a bit of a fantastical, and that works in this setting.

It's a lovely read, and will sweep you along with it.

Once Upon a River is out on 17th January 2019, and will be available on Amazon, and everywhere else you can find books!

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield, a review by Nicky Galliers

Once Upon A River is an adult fairy story set along the banks of the Thames from Oxford east towards Buscot. The scene is set in the Swan Inn in Radcot where the locals take enormous pride in being talented storytellers, and take great delight in telling stories in myriad ways, and in helping their fellows with their use of language and description. So far so genteel, but as with all good fairy stories, darkness is never far away, and the shadow of evil enters the inn in the form of a man, drenched, carrying the lifeless body of a child.

This is a very accomplished novel filled with fascinating characters that are multi-layered and are never quite what they seem. All of them have a story to tell, and as we progress through the events of the novel, they tell them, some with great enthusiasm, others with equal reluctance. In the tradition of Hans Christian Andersen, there is not always a happy ending for everyone and disaster and evil are never far away.

And yet it is not so dark that one leaves the novel disheartened. Very much the moral of the story is that good things will happen if good people put themselves forward.

Is this novel fantasy or history? It is a bit of both. We learn a great deal of the workings of early photography, and yet it is unashamedly a fantasy with ghosts, apparitions and strange happenings, people who may or may not exist and a river that may also not be real.

The only drawback to this marvellously written novel is that it is very long. I found that I wanted to read to the end because I couldn't see how it was going to conclude, but it took a long time. Was it worth it? Yes, it was, because the last twenty percent of the novel is where it really comes alive and answers are revealed to questions that have confounded the riverside communities. Persevere, it is worth it, but set aside around ten hours for it.

Evocative, mesmerising and absorbing, this is the tale of a small section of the River Thames. But it’s also the story of a group of people, locals, who accept the ebb and flow of the river and the people who come their way. Interwoven stories tell of publicans, a Parson and his housekeeper, a wealthy couple whose daughter has disappeared, a photographer and a man in search of his son and grandchild. Initially the threads took some time to make sense, but slowly the story builds and the interwoven strands add colour and complexity to this beguiling tale.

Diane Setterfield writes beautifully and every episode adds layers and strands to the tale, drawing you in. Much like the Thirteenth Tale, this book needs time to be absorbed and savoured, not rushed.

I loved every minute of it and was bereft when it ended. 5* utterly brilliant.

The Thirteenth Tale is one of my favourite books so I was really looking forward to this one.

The setting is and Inn on the Thames which is known for story-telling. A man comes in and collapses, he has what looks like a doll with him, but it turns out to be a dead child, who then comes back to life. The story travels fast and soon more than one person comes to claim her as their child. What follows is a beautifully written tale, piecing together the mystery of the child who died and then lived again.
The book started really well, but for me, it lost momentum about halfway through, Still a thoroughly enjoyable story.

I fell in love with Diane Setterfield's first book, I was disappointed by her second; but when I saw the title of this third novel I thought that everything would be alright and as soon as I started to read I was quite certain that it would.

Imagine curling up in a big armchair by a blazing fire on a wild and stormy night and listening to an story-teller who will have you hanging on every world and completely wrapped up in the story from beginning to end.

Reading this book was rather like that.

Back in the latter years of the 19th century there were many inns along the banks of the Thames and each one was renowned for something different, from music to gambling, from brawling to storytelling ...

It was the Swan Inn at Radcot that was known for its storytelling. It had been run for generations by the Ockwell family and it was a place where grand stories, with a good sprinkling of folklore and magic, were told, talked over, and re-told.

The grandest of all of the stories that would ever be told at the Swan Inn began on the night of the winter solstice. A badly injured stranger came through the door, carrying what all of those present believed to a large, bedraggled puppet.

They were wrong. 

The man was carrying a lifeless young girl.

Rita Sunday, the local nurse and widwife, was called and she quickly established that the girl had no pulse and was not breathing and that there was nothing she could go for her. She was laid out in a cold outer room while Rita treated the man’s injuries. Later she went back to the girl, because she couldn't understand how she had died, and she was astonished to small signs of life. The girl would live. Rita’s scientific interest is piqued, because she cannot comprehend how anyone who is so clearly dead can recover and live.

Nobody knows who the child is or where she came from, and she is unable to speak or tell to tell anyone anything about herself or her history.

She might be the child of a wealthy couple who had been kidnapped years earlier.

She might be the granddaughter of a gentleman farmer who knew that his estranged son had abandoned his wife and child.

She might be the sister of a poor young woman who had never given up hope that she would come back one day.

These are just some of the different characters whose stories - past and present - are wrapped around the story of the unknown child. The stories are rich and vividly told, the characters live and breathe, and it is so easy to be drawn in and to care deeply about what happens.

There are good and hard-working people who do their best to help their friends and neighbours; there are people whose hearts have broken but who know that they can do nothing but carry on; but there are also scoundrels and evil-doers who will take advantage of any situation for their own ends.

All life is here.

Rita and the man whose life she saved - a photographer named Henry Daunt - become close and they set out to solve the mystery at the heart of the story.

It is a story rich with the best kind of magic - magic rooted in nature and humanity

Stories are told of Quietly, one of a long line of a family of mute ferrymen, who travels between the worlds of the living and the dead. He will rescue river travellers in distress and will either deliver them safely to one side of the bank if it is not their time to pass, or to another destination if it is ....

The river is always there, flowing through the story and its lovely prose.

The story moves slowly and it rewards slow reading. The writing is gorgeous, there is so much many stories within the story to read and appreciate, and it is lovely spending time with all of the people who are part of those stories.

Every detail was right, every note rang true, and the world of this book felt utterly, utterly real.

Everything comes together beautifully and without a hint of contrivance.

It was a wrench to leave, and I can't quite believe that I couldn't go to the Swan Inn and listen to the descendants of the people I have been reading about telling tales of them, telling the tales of this book, telling tales of their own ....

I was spellbound from the first page to the last.

I received an early copy of this book for my independent and honest review.
The scene is set right from the very first chapter when a man stumbled into an inn on the side of the River Thames in London carrying a dead girl. Or is she dead!!!
This is a tale of mystery,intrigue with magical realism running throughout. It is an adult folklore tale that has been cleverly crafted and beautifully written. The descriptions of the setting are so vibrant you imagine yourself there.
If you are looking for an unusual book set in the nineteenth century them this is one to choose.
It is a very slow burner so if you prefer fast paced books and predictability,then this may not be for you. Even I would have preferred a slightly faster pace.
An excellent choice to immerse yourself in during the colder winter months.

This is a treat of a book. Diane Setterfield is a master of her art and has created a delicious tale of stories and storytellers, of love and loss, of a drowned child who rises from the dead and the people whose lives are affected by strange events. The tale meanders like the river in the title, wending its way between the stories linking each of the characters, slowly revealing the lies and half-truths that bind them.
This is the sort of book you can’t wait to pick up and don’t want to finish. You will relish every word.

This book is utterly absorbing, very well written with excellent characterisation of place as well as of people. I know the area in which it is set relatively well and it was interesting to read a fictional history of the upper Thames with such great historical detail. A fascinating read, highly recommended.

Captivating magical realism that weaves many stories through the twists and turns of the Thames. The characterisations are excellent and the atmosphere evocative of small communities more than a century ago. I did feel the pace could have been quicker and a bit more editing helpful but a lovely, enchanting read.