I had trouble getting into the book - it started out too slowly and was hard for me to get engaged especially because it flipped between so many different characters in the beginning. But I tried a second time and did end up enjoying it. I was ok with the magic realism ending (I actually love fantasy books and books with supernatural elements) and thought the author did a great job coming up with explanations for Amelia’s and Alice’s disappearances in a way that was unexpected. I really liked the Rita and Armstrong characters too. I also did like her dreamy, evocative writing style but don’t think I would recommend this book to any of my friends due to the slow start and many parts which were slow going where I had to push myself to keep reading. I did enjoy her first book, The Thirteenth Tale, much more - that one didn’t have any slow parts!
Wait list just delivered! Starting it now.
@lemonlee I feel as you do about recommending the book, it did have slow complicated Start, but one it was rolling, it was quite a page turner.
@himom the young boy who you refer to is Ben, remember he finds Alice in an orphanage,
From interview, Setterfield mentions her inspiration -
https://bookriot.com/2018/11/25/diane-setterfield-interview/
Yes, Ben did remind me of sone of Fagan’s group of kids in Oliver Twist—good hearted and resilient.
The availability of DNA testing would have shortened the story considerably. 
Of course, even apart from that, this tale would not have worked set in modern times. Medical science would have cleared up much of the mystery of the little girl’s return to life, and Rita would likely not have witnessed so many traumatic childbirths. (Was her reluctance to marry Daunt due to fear of childbirth or fear of being unable to continue her medical work? Or a little of both?)
Re the time period, I was surprised that the Armstrongs could live so peaceably in a mixed marriage in 1870, but I guess living on the Thames in 1870 is a lot different from the U.S. Civil War south. Also, class generally seems to trump race, and Armstrong was the son of an earl.
“Sometimes I think there is nothing more a man can do. A child is not an empty vessel, Fleet, to be formed in whatever way the parent thinks fit. They are born with their own hearts and they cannot be made otherwise, no matter what love a man lavishes on them.”
The novel certainly make the argument that nature trumps nurture. This is true for Armstrong, Ben, Rita, Lilly, as well as Robin. The mysterious girl tied this together with a nature not really belonging to this world. AMaynd she was Quietly’s daughter. Maybe not literally, but a slate, so to speak, which allowed everyone to project their loved little girl. She came at a time when Rita, and Mrs. Vaughn needed closure. This would not be possible without the magical realism.
I loved this book. But I also love magical realism. Somehow, it allow us to get at emotions and truths not possible by staying with the concrete and scientific. It also reminds us that science is always evolving and what we thought not possible, really is.
Cutting to the chase, I liked the book a lot. That said, at the beginning it seemed it would be a bit of a slog to get through. Part of that may be that I was only reading several pages at a time before going to sleep – usually not the best way for me to “get into” in new book!
Two of my favorite characters were Rita and Daunt. I didn’t get why Rita was initially so resistant to falling in love with Daunt, and was glad when they finally got together at the end. (Yeh, I’m all over a happy ending.)
As @Mary13 said above, I was also surprised at how easily the Armstrongs fit into society in a mixed marriage.
Like @Mary13 and @SouthJerseyChessMom “I’m short on magical and long on realism,” so I had my doubts at first, but I loved this book!
To me the girl was more a connecting piece of the story rather than a major character, so the unresolved nature of her identity didn’t bother me that much. The stories circled around and through her, but she didn’t speak herself. She was whatever the others wanted her to be.
I loved all the sections with Daunt and Rita. I listened to a lot of the book on audio, with wonderful narration by Juliet Stevenson. Particularly on audio. the scene where Daunt takes the first photographs of Rita and shows her his darkroom is the steamiest scene without sex I’ve read in a long time:
Interesting that Daunt was based on a real photographer, Henry Taunt. I had never heard of him. You can see a lot of his photographs online, and they are lovely.
http://henrytaunt.com/home.htm
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/results.aspx?index=0&form=advanced&who=Taunt
Daunt and Rita, the Armstrongs, the Vaughans, Margo & Joe–I really liked the portrayal of the relationships; flawed people who made sense together, not just because they found the other beautiful or handsome.
The only part that annoyed me was the section with Victor-the-villian at the end. He was one character we weren’t given any reason to like or understand, and was a bit over the top. But then I just imagined him as transported in from a Dickens novel and I was okay. Thanks to @SouthJerseyChessMom for linking that interview where Setterfield says Ben was based on Dickens! Ben’s long speech at the end definitely has that feel in the audio version.
It does indeed. I found that discouraging. It’s hard to believe that a child raised in the Armstrong home could turn out to be a bad seed simply because of his father’s genes.
Me, too. They had such an easy rapport (but with the requisite amount of romantic tension). I thought their relationship underscored the theme of how we are seen by others – and how much of ourselves we allow to be seen. What “lens” do we use? How realistic is the image we see? At the opening of the novel, Rita is a quiet professional who reveals little of herself. But by the end, she has let Daunt see her in all her complexity. The way we see/are seen is also emphasized with Bess and her “magical” eye. In that case, it adds another level, i.e., how much do we really want to know about others? The ability to recognize another person’s true nature at a glance would be both a gift and a curse.
Yes, @Mary13 the nature/nurture issue is a bit depressing, could there have been a more loving father than Mr Armstrong, perhaps Setterfield just needed an evil character, or two, to balance the story. Every fairy tale has to have its ogres.
But, there was something magical about this book. Was it the fairy tale genre, the mystical element or the beautiful, warm, caring nature of almost all the characters, except Robin and Victor?
Someone mentioned above, the characters were either good or bad, which is true.
I loved how the rugged, hard working men of Swan Inn immediately fell in love with the mysterious child, all wanted to protect and care for her. Setterfield hooked me then and there.
Even though the atmosphere, setting, and time. Period evoked dreary, greyness, rains and the omnipresent dark river, there was a warmth, and positivity at the heart of this novel, “ happily ever after “.
Plus, I detected a bit of humor, reminding me of a Room with a View ?
Perhaps this blogger, summed up this for me…
http://columbiajournal.org/review-once-upon-a-river-by-diane-setterfield/
Thank @buenavista for those links. Great pics
Like @buenavista , I also saw the girl as the connection between the various stories. Perhaps the whole idea of :“story” was the main character!
I also enjoyed the audio version, in which the narrator conveyed social class distinctions through the varied accents (as a non-Brit, I had to assume they were true accents). She was also convincing in reading the male parts, so much that I’d forget the book was being narrated at all and just allowed myself to be absorbed in hearing Armstrong or Victor or Daunt or small Ben. For stories like this, I’m firmly on the “of course audio is reading!” side of the discussion in this thread:
I believe this is the first book I’ve ever read in which a person with Down syndrome was a character. The author portrayed Jonathan with respectful humanity.
Thoughts after taking time to read through the posts so far:
I thought that the young girl rescued that night by Daunt was most likely Robin’s daughter, despite the fact that he left that claim dangling. As for Lily, I believed that a young child, most likely her child by Victor, drowned either by accident or with malice, just not right then and there. (Didn’t incest play an important role in The Thirteenth Tale?) And this:
Exactly!
The nature vs nurture aspect bothered me also. I chalk it up to Robin always knowing he looked different than his brothers and sisters with no explanation forthcoming. When he found the letter re “Robert’s inheritance” he felt cheated and his weaknesses overcame the positives of his upbringing. He knew he wasn’t Armstrong’s child and believed that he was cheated out of what was rightfully his. So maybe nurture just wasn’t enough in this case - and maybe Bess and Armstrong should have stopped the benefit of the doubt earlier in his case.
I loved this book and knew - almost immediately - that I would. It was Setterfield’s writing. I had the opposite reaction - almost immediately - to Pachinko. I hoped the story would overcome the writing but for me it never did.
And the “fortune teller” greatly amused me, as we ran into the same fake fortune telling schemes in Jane Eyre and Far from the Madding Crowd and (waving @mathmom, Dorothy Dunnett’s The Game of Kings). Fortune tellers - fake and otherwise - must have been a thing in books written in the 1800s and those set in that time and earlier.
LOL @ignatius you remember The Game of Kings better than I do!
I did like the writing style even though sometimes when we got a super poetic chapter, I’d start rolling my eyes a bit!
One thing I did like very much is the sense of place. There’s still a Swan Inn (Ye Olde Swan) which seems to have had its ups and downs and name changes (per Tripadvisor). https://yeoldeswan.co.uk/gallery/ The Radcot bridge gets a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcot_Bridge Setterfield mentions this website in her afterword: http://www.thames.me.uk/ It’s worth checking out.
I’m confused about something.
What is the explanation of Daunt’s horrendous injuries ?
And, are we supposed to believe there is “the possibility” that the girl lives with the gypsies, they lost her a year earlier ? Is this the rational possibility ? Or was Setterfiled toying with us !
@ignatius you read the book twice so I know it’s fresh in your mind.
Just chiming in very briefly here –
I didn’t care for the book. I really don’t like sci fi/fantasy/magic stuff. That said, I did find it to be a page turner when there were only around 100 pages to go. Rita was fabulous and I knew right away that of course she’d wind up with Daunt.
Daunt’s injuries were a result of his bumping into that dam.
I am loving this discussion.
@jollymama, I actually read and listen to the Book Club books, sometime separately, sometimes together. Format usually depends on what else is going on. I’m with you. Listening to a book is reading it. I was a Vision Teacher in the past and my students “read” a lot of books on tape.
@SouthJerseyChessMom, Daunt tells Rita how he got his injuries on the river at Devil’s Weir in the Chapter The Tale of the Ferryman. I have it on Kindle and there aren’t page numbers, just location. The description starts at location 1947.
But wait, no…Robin’s daughter is the little girl dropped onto the barge and rescued from the orphanage by Ben. She is recognized immediately by Bess as being the spitting image of Robin, so can’t be the girl Daunt rescued.
I read Jewel by Bret Lott many years ago. Really liked it.
@ignatius, also fake fortune tellers in Possession!
@Mary13: Oops. I evidently didn’t make myself clear. I meant that I thought - at first and for quite a while - that the little girl was Robin’s daughter. He obviously didn’t care about her one way or another, but then he wouldn’t have, would he? He wanted money. I was quite pleased that her mother dropped Alice on the barge - hopefully intentionally - and that she made her way to her grandparents with Ben’s help.
Ahh … one of the stories being told at The Swan to explain her disappearance. If you think about it, it is a more rational possibility than that she reunites with Quietly her father. Me … I believe the Quietly story. Still, for those who search for a rational explanation, why not the gypsies? LOL
Me, i agree with the other poster who would be beside myself for having had one child kidnapped and another girl disappear while under my care. I can certainly understand moving to another continent, hopefully finding some peace to raise the next child.