A magical tale, beautifully written, which kept me spellbound from the first page. A community centred around the local waterside inn is shocked when an injured man arrives on the winter solstice, carrying what is thought to be a puppet. When it is realised that it is in fact the body of an unknown little girl in his arms, the lives of numerous people in the village are changed for ever.
Diane Setterfield draws a rich cast of interesting and varied characters, places them in a beguiling setting and plots an intricate tale which, for me, matches some of the old classics.
Easily my favourite read for a long time and a book I would buy for friends.
Very many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the chance to review a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

It is the longest night of the year and the men of Radcot, Oxfordshire, gather in The Swan, an ancient inn on the banks of the Thames, keeping to its winter room for warmth. There are no women among the regulars although each knows that the landlady, Margot, rules queen of this inn. The appeal of The Swan is that it is a place for telling stories. The landlord, Joe, a man who ails from damp in his lungs, is a master of storytelling and people gather to hear him and to tell their own. On this midwinter’s night they will each gain a new story, better than any. An injured stranger bursts through the door and collapses. In his arms is the body of a young girl, four-years-old at most. Rita Sunday, the local healer, is fetched but it is clear to everyone that the child is dead. But then, hours later, she wakes up.

The community of Radcot knows all about lost children. The Vaughans lost their daughter two years before, stolen by thieves. Little Amelia’s mother, Helena, a young woman who feels more at home on the river than she does on land, is bereft and her husband despairs. Might this child be Amelia? Robert Armstrong has cause to think that she might instead be the granddaughter he’s never met, a little girl feared drowned. And then there’s Lily White, a woman who is lost herself, who lives in little more than a hovel, who believes that the child can be none other than her sister, who she last saw so long ago. All of these people are as linked by their sorrow as they are by the river as it flows through their lives during the months between midwinter and midsummer and the winter once more. A time that will change them all.

Once Upon a River is a stunningly gorgeous and melancholic tale set along the Thames during the later Victorian years. This is beautiful writing. The flow of the river and its tributaries form the heart of the novel and they also weave their way through its prose and imagery. It’s a hypnotic book, albeit a very sad one in places, because this is a novel about lost children, the hope of a child found, and the folklore of a river that might be the centre of this village’s life but it is also a place of death, especially for those in despair, and superstition.

Diane Setterfield paints such exquisite portraits of the men and women who live in Radcot and its environs. We occasionally might meet dangerous predators but the majority of the people we come across are drawn with such tenderness and care. It’s impossible not to become involved in their stories. For me, the standout character, among many who stand out, is Robert Armstrong, a gentle giant if ever there was one, whose empathy for his fellow human beings, especially children, as well as for the creatures that he farms or comes across during his day is bewitching. He has something in his pocket for them all but he also gives them all his time and attention. His adoration for his pigs is something to behold. They are his friends. One, alas, like the little girl carried out of the river, is lost. I also loved the theme of photography that weaves through the novel – this is the dawn of a new age, the age of Darwin and science, which is now trickling down to those who live superstitious and relatively impoverished lives along the Thames.

We get to know these people intimately as they live their lives, suffer their griefs, enjoy their rare joys, and sometimes die, meeting the ferryman that they all believe haunts these waters. Diane Setterfield understands their motivations entirely and each of the stories we encounter here is perfectly formed. There is, though, such a sadness to parts of the novel which did at times make for painful reading but I was so hypnotised by it I could not put it down, staying up late into the night to read it. There is lightness to counteract the darkness. There is hope and there is also gentle humour as well as great kindness. A fairy tale of sorts, there are hints of something otherworldly just out of reach.

Once Upon a River is an immersive, beguiling novel from start to finish. It is also set in my part of the world and it made me feel closer to it, made me want to explore more of it. The beautiful cover hints at wonders within and they are there to discover and enjoy. I have no doubt that this marvellous book will be among my favourites of the year.

5★
“Drowning is easy. Every year the river helps herself to a few lives. One drink too many, one hasty step, one second’s lapse of attention is all it takes.”

Loved it! A wonderful story of people living along the banks of the Thames, and of mysterious disappearances, love, violence, and neighbours, all held together with stories. Storytelling is an art form that not all can master. Young Jonathan tries to learn how by listening to his father, Joe, and the other regulars at the Swan, Joe’s inn. They tell and retell and polish stories, many of them about drowning.

One dreadful night, a man stumbles in, dripping wet and bleeding from a badly gashed face and carrying the lifeless body of a little girl. Rita is the local nurse, and she does what she can to treat them both.

“Rita Sunday was not afraid of corpses. She was used to them from childhood, had even been born from one.”

But she is startled when suddenly, the child has a pulse. Speculation begins in the inn!

“The drinkers began to talk, finding words to turn the night’s events into a story.

‘When I saw him in the doorway there, I was astonished. No, astounded. That’s what I was. Astounded!’

‘I was stunned, I was.’

‘And me. I was stunned and astounded. What about you?’

They were collectors of words, the same way so many of the graveldiggers were collectors of fossils. They kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique.

‘I reckon I was dumbfounded.’

They tried it out for flavour, weighing it on their tongues. It was good. They gave their colleague admiring nods.”

This is too tricky for Jonathan. He is not only too young, he is also hampered by his Downs Syndrome, making it hard to remember the format and the words. His mother, Margot, runs the inn, now that Joe’s health is failing, and she is helped by the daughters, referred to collectively as the Little Margots. Jonathan is a much-loved member of the family and of the inn regulars.

Not all the families in this book are so caring. Nobody knows who these two rescued people are, but a little girl had disappeared, presumed kidnapped or drowned, two years ago, and this little one is about the right age and appearance. But she doesn’t speak. The couple who lost her are still distraught.

The author introduces us to a few families, including a charismatic pig (dear Maud), and reveals some other mysterious disappearances, kidnappings, and/or runaways. Over, under, and around these stories runs the river.

I don’t think you can read this book without being overwhelmed by the power of the river. I am going to include a long quotation here and let you find the book for yourselves to discover these wonderful people and their mysteries for yourself.

“. . . furlong by furlong, singleness of direction is not its most obvious feature. En route the river does not seem particularly intent on reaching its destination. Instead it winds its way in time-wasting loops and diversions.
. . .
It finds its way into wells and is drawn up to launder petticoats and be boiled for tea. It is absorbed into root membranes, travels up cell by cell to the surface, is held in the leaves of watercress that find themselves in the soup bowls and on the cheeseboards of the county’s diners. From teapot or soup dish, it passes into mouths, irrigates complex internal biological networks that are worlds in themselves, before returning eventually to the earth, via a chamber pot. Elsewhere the river water clings to the leaves of the willows that droop to touch its surface, and then when the sun comes up a droplet appears to vanish into the air, where it travels invisibly and might join a cloud, a vast floating lake, until it falls again as rain. This is the unmappable journey of the Thames.”

It brings life and death, and it brings Quietly, the ferryman, a long gaunt figure whom some people claim to have seen poling his punt at great speed and who has saved them from drowning. He is also said to ferry people to “the other side” when their time has come to not be rescued.

Reading this, you will be hard pressed to feel warm and dry, what with the rain and the winds and the mists and the winter dark during which some of this takes place. There is something about this book that reminds me of how much I loved Reservoir 13. The sense of people gathering together, the descriptions of the setting, and the communal loss felt when someone disappears.

And a last word about the reliability of stories.

“When they had remembered everything there was to remember, the alcohol encouraged them to recall things they only half remembered and even to invent things they did not remember at all.”

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Transworld Publishers for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.
#OnceUponAriver #NetGalley

I loved this book! Very unusual tale of a lost child, beautifully told and with a cast of unforgettable characters. Highly recommended.

A very unusual book, very charming and quite irresistible!
Everyone has a story to tell, and in The Swan, everybody does....then one night, something happens to give them the greatest, the strangest, the most unbelievable story of all! The story is a child who it appears everyone wants....but who’s is she, and where did she come from?

I've loved all of Diane Setterfield's work but this was my favourite. A truly awesome piece of storytelling that I have been encouraging everyone to read. Some novel are about magic, some contain magic but this novel truly is magic! A master of the craft doing some of her best work. Unputadownable.

The Swan inn is famed for the quality of its storytellers but no story is as fantastical as the events that happen one evening when an injured stranger comes through the door carrying in his arms a dead child, hours later and the child is alive. Who are they? Well the man is easily identified but the child less so... Claimed by the rich Vaughan's as being their kidnapped daughter Amelia, by the son of a local farmer as being his daughter by his estranged wife and by a local housekeeper as being her long lost sister, the silent child keeps her secrets. Meanwhile the truth behind each claim is exposed.
This story started as a fairy tale and then developed even further into a sad and magical tale of love and loss. Each character is beautifully imagined with little personality quirks and a complete back story. I found myself getting lost in the tales of fortune-telling pigs and women scared of childbirth amongst others. This is sublimely gentle writing which also leaves its mark on the reader and at the heart is the River Thames, wild and calm, the keeper of all secrets.

Not Science, not a miracle but maybe magic. A wholly suspended reality, a fairytale woven around the River Thames in a time steeped in suspicion and superstition. I admired the juxtaposition of the revered storytellers of the Swan Inn plying their, yes, magic and mystery with the emerging artistry of Daunt's photography-the new 'science' - bringing with it a burst of emerging reality. This is an ode to a river and it's people in an age before now. Now, when everything has an explanation and we don't rest until we get one.
Thanks to Goodreads and Atria Books for the ARC.

This is a lovely book - it flows like the River Thames it follows. The stories and the characters each have their place and, although there is a mystery at the end, most of the plot lines tie up satisfactorily.

The greatest of yarns about yarns along the river. A great story of life along the river in which a man and a girl child come from the water into The Swan at Radcot. The child is dead the man not quite. Then something amazing happens and the girl joins the community, as does the man. Each person holds a place in the yarn, the story is very important to them. They practice their tale telling and help each other ensure that the story is the best it can be without being 'wrong'. Many people want the girl for themselves, there is something about her that makes people want to look after her and have her for their own. But who's child is she. Helena and Anthony Vaughan lost Amelia two years ago near the river and believe the girl is theirs. Robert and Bess Armstrong think that she is Alice, their son's lost girl. And Lily White thinks that she is her sister Ann. Where there are those that want only the best for the girl, there are other's who can see a way to make more for themselves out of her story and situation. Ultimately she is someone's girl, but everyone has to tell their story before we can hear the ending.
What a brilliant book, I found it really interesting and enjoyable to read. I really don't think I can criticise it at all.

Thankyou to NetGalley, the publishers and the author, Diane Setterfield, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of Once Upon A River in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
What a beautifully written and thoroughly intriguing story. I was immersed from the start and loved the whole atmosphere of the plot and the characters.
Well worth a read.

On the night of the Winter solstice an injured man bursts through the doors of an old inn, in his arms he carries the body of a dead child. The gathered drinkers are shook by this event. A few hours later, the little girl returns to life, and thus begins an atmospheric, strange tale, full of history, discovery, science, family, heartache, and magic. It is a beautifully written narrative, although don't expect a gripping thriller. It's the sort of quiet novel that sneaks up on you, you don't realize just how far it has hooked you until you find yourself racing to the end to see how all of the characters have fared, and there are many characters. It is such a richly imagined world that you can almost smell the river and hear the characters voices as they spin their yarns.

So pleased to have been given the chance to read this book, thank you NetGalley and Doubleday. This was the first book I've read by this author, and as soon as I finished it I ordered 'The Thirteenth Tale', am very much looking forward to dipping into that, and hoping to have found a new favourite.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars.

I think the problem with a Diane Setterfield novel is expecting it to be as amazing and haunting as The Thirteenth Tale was. This is not that.

This is a very slow novel with a lot of scene setting and introducing lots of characters. There is a lot of depth to this novel - it just takes so looooooong to get there! However, I really enjoyed the last 30%. It's definitely worth a read - just don't expect too much if you've read and enjoyed Setterfield's debut.

Plot: The Swan on the upper banks of the river Thames is an ancient “storytelling” pub. On one midwinter’s night, a badly injured and drenched man bursts in holding the body of a little girl. It’s only a few hours later that the girl takes a breath and is, once again, alive. This is a twisting tale of folklore and storytelling that crosses the genres of fantasy, reality and history.

My thoughts: I absolutely adored Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, a book I read in 2017 and wish I’d written, so I was really excited about this new one. The cover is only the first gorgeous thing about this book which mixes beautiful writing alongside a twisting and turning story. The style was quite unusual – rather than focusing on one character, the storyline flits between different viewpoints and characters – a true ancient storytelling method with no one real narrator, and sometimes an external narrator too. It was a gorgeous read, though a little slow at times – this gave you opportunity to enjoy the storytelling but if you prefer a fast-paced read, you won’t find that here.

What an amazing read. A proper story An incredibly well-written story that totally absorbs you into every single page. One of those books you never want it to end. I cannot recommend this book enough..

I doubt anyone who knows me at this point wonders what my opinions about this book are. I absolutely loved this one with all my heart. In fact, now that I am looking over my notes and reading over my favourite parts of the book again for this review, I am thinking of bumping up the rating from 4.5 to 5. Yeah, that’s how much I really enjoyed it.

The story mostly revolves around an inn called The Swan, one night a stranger comes in with a dead child in his arms, the man himself injured and just about ready to faint. The child is declared dead by the people in the pub and even the nurse they bring in thinks that the child is dead however later, the child is alive. That mystery is not the only one to solve in the book, there’s the question of where the child came from, who are her real parents for there are many claims from couples around the place.

This story is filled with interesting characters and it’s heavily dependent on the characters rather than the plot itself. There’s never a shocking revelation at any given point nor is there a twist you might not see coming because it is not that kind of book. This story also features the Thames as a character itself, it’s given such an important part in the tale then there’s the fact that it’s always a wonder what people can do with stories given half a chance. There’s magical touch to it all and it’s quiet and not obvious but I loved it all the same.

Overall, there’s so much to love about this book and very little to dislike, hence my very fangirly review. Do read it if you loved anything of Naomi Novik or Katherine Arden. There’s everything for everyone in this one.

Excellent and well written book on 19th century mystery. Enjoyed the read with many twists and turns with surprising ending.

This book was a slow burn which is appropriate given the subject matter. The story wends its way into your consciousness like the Thames wending its way through the land linking the lives along its banks. I particularly enjoyed the story of Daunt and Rita Sunday, but the mystery of the girl dead then alive, is she Alice or is she Amelia? I found that all a bit too magical realism for my tastes. That said it began to be more explained towards the end. A lryical read which others will love, and it talks with love about the natural world and the historical era , there is stuff to learn here.

This is a beautifully written tale, lyrical and atmospheric. With everything winding around the river. I really enjoyed this and the confusing names are all worth persevering with.
I was given a ARC by NetGalley, all opinions are my own,

I really enjoyed Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. Reminiscent of Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpant it is a story that reviolves around local superstition and gossip. Like the regulars in The Swan who entertain themselves by telling and re telling stories so Setterfield has brought us a tale based on both superstition and fact. Highly recommended