Tag: Once Upon a River

Review 1386: Once Upon a River

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Here we are with another novel that was difficult for me to rate. On the one hand, it is more fairy tale-like than is usually my taste. On the other hand, it kept my attention. Yet again, it presents us with a mystery that isn’t very difficult to solve.

In an inn along the Thames at an unspecified period in time, the patrons and owners occupy themselves with telling tales. One dark night, however, a tale comes right to the house. A man staggers in, all beaten and bloody, carrying what appears to be a puppet. It turns out to be a little girl, apparently dead. Indeed, when the local nurse, Rita, is summoned, she sees that the girl has dilated pupils and no pulse. But something doesn’t seem right, and the girl comes back to life.

She doesn’t speak, however, and no one knows who she is. The injured man, Henry Daunt, only saw her in the flood before he lost his boat.

Soon, there are several possible identities for the girl. Robert Armstrong finds a letter for his son, Robin, from a woman begging for help for her and his daughter. When Robert goes to her, she has just committed suicide and no one knows what happened to her four-year-old daughter, Alice. Lily White, the parson’s housekeeper, says the girl is her sister, Ann. Then the Vaughns claim her. Two years ago, their daughter, Amelia, was kidnapped. When they paid the ransom, the girl was not returned.

There are problems with all these stories. Robert Armstrong has never seen his grandchild, and his son, Robin, seems to be unsure whether the girl is Alice. Sadly, Robin is frequently up to no good. Lily is far too old, in her forties, to have a four-year-old sister. Finally, although Helena Vaughn is convinced the girl is Amelia, Anthony Vaughn, Rita can see, clearly doesn’t believe it.

Lots of secrets come out before we learn who the girl is, or rather, because I thought it was obvious, have it confirmed. In addition, there are lots of subplots, like a stolen pig, a runaway boy, a mysterious visitor, that all somehow related to the book’s central mystery.

The novel has some really rotten bad guys, as all fairy tales must have. It also has some very likable characters, in particular, Henry Daunt, Rita, and Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong. I think that readers who enjoy fairy tales will like this book and some others will, too.

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Day 138: Once Upon a River

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Cover for Once Upon a RiverBest Book of the Week!

In 1970’s Michigan, Margo Crane has grown up on a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, learning how to hunt and fish from her grandfather and swimming across the river to play with her Murray cousins. The first chapters of Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s coming-of-age novel, show her running wild while her depressed, alcoholic mother sleeps all day in the sun.

Margo is a young teenager when her mother abandons her and her father. The two of them manage until a party at the Murray’s, when Margo is sexually assaulted by her uncle Cal. This incident becomes very public, severing the Cranes’ ties with the Murrays. Although Margo is initially confused about how she feels, her eventual attempt to revenge herself on her uncle goes horribly wrong and results in her cousin Billy murdering her father. With no one to care for her, Margo takes a boat and her uncle’s best rifle and begins a journey on the river.

For Margo, this is a journey of discovery, about what kind of person she is and how she wants to live, about how to form her system of ethics and what it should be. Rather than being plot driven, the novel is about the people Margo meets and her interactions with them. It is a sometimes lyrical novel about a way of life that is almost completely gone except in remote areas of the continental United States.

I was attracted to reading this book because I grew up in Michigan a decade earlier than Margo. But this is a different Michigan. I had a hard time imagining that such a life was possible around the Kalamazoo, which is now and was then in a fairly populated area of the state. I would not have such a hard time with this if the novel was set further north. However, don’t misunderstand me. I am not implying that Campbell doesn’t know her subject.

I have seen the novel compared to the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but even though Margo travels up and down the river, the journeys here are mostly internal. Once Upon a River is beautifully written in spare prose, creating an unforgettable main character in Margo.