On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place.

The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an explanation? These questions have many answers, some of them quite dark indeed.

Those who dwell on the river bank apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass the mystery only deepens. The child herself is mute and unable to answer the essential questions: Who is she? Where did she come from? And to whom does she belong? But answers proliferate nonetheless.

Three families are keen to claim her. A wealthy young mother knows the girl is her kidnapped daughter, missing for two years. A farming family reeling from the discovery of their son’s secret liaison, stand ready to welcome their granddaughter. The parson’s housekeeper, humble and isolated, sees in the child the image of her younger sister. But the return of a lost child is not without complications and no matter how heartbreaking the past losses, no matter how precious the child herself, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known.

Once Upon a River is a glorious tapestry of a book that combines folklore and science, magic and myth. Suspenseful, romantic, and richly atmospheric, the beginning of this novel will sweep you away on a powerful current of storytelling, transporting you through worlds both real and imagined, to the triumphant conclusion whose depths will continue to give up their treasures long after the last page is turned.

My Review

I think this has to be one of my favourite books ever. It’s so original, with a cast of characters that I absolutely adored. It’s set in the area around the banks of the River Thames in 1887. I love that it is set in my part of the country, so I recognised many of the places, particularly Kelmscott, which I associate with William Morris and the Kelmscott Press.

It’s a story about stories and storytelling, much of which happens at the pub run by Joe and his wife Margot. They have lots of children, the girls referred to as ‘the little Margots’, which tickled me no end, and Jonathan, the youngest, who today would be recognised as being Downs.

Rita is a nurse and midwife, brought up by the nuns, who taught her everything she knows about medicine, probably far more than the doctors to be honest. She has never married or had children.

But back to the beginning. One dark night, the pub doors are flung open and a wounded stranger appears, carrying the body of a drowned child. He is badly hurt and the child appears quite dead. But while Rita nurses the stranger, she also notices that the child may not be dead, and some time later, the child begins to breathe. But who is she? We discover she isn’t the child of the stranger. She is mute, so cannot tell them anything. The stranger, incidentally, turns out to be Mr Gaunt of Oxford, a photographer who lives on a barge called Cullodian.

In the meantime, we are introduced to Robert Armstrong. A big man of mixed race, he is kind and empathic. He runs a farm and talks to his animals, particularly the pigs. His favourite pig Maud was stolen one night and he misses her terribly. His wife Bess wears an eye patch and has a limp, and people are suspicious of her, as they were in those days. They have many children, the oldest of which is Robin, but we know he’s a wrong’un and left home to conduct a secret liaison, but then they separated, and she fell on hard times. She took her own life and supposedly drowned their daughter Alice.

Then there are the Vaughans – Antony and Helena – whose daughter Amelia was kidnapped two years earlier. Could this be her? She was never returned to them.

Finally we have Lily White, who believes the child to be her little sister Ann, but the child is around four years of age and Lily is in her forties, so how can that be possible?

Is the girl one of these three? Or someone else entirely?

Once Upon A River is full of tales of magic, myth and folklore. But perhaps my favourite is the tale of Quietly the Ferryman, who lost his daughter to the river. He now finds the drowned and if they are going to survive, he rows them back to the land of the living, but if not, he rows them across to the other side.

I listened to this on Audible and I have to say that the narration by Juliet Stephenson is stunning, probably the best of any audio book I have listened to so far. Her voices and accents are second to none.

About the Author

Diane Setterfield is a British author. Her bestselling novel, The Thirteenth Tale (2006) was published in 38 countries worldwide and has sold more than three million copies. It was number one in the New York Times hardback fiction list for three weeks and is enjoyed as much for being ‘a love letter to reading’ as for its mystery and style. Her second novel, Bellman & Black (2013 is a genre-defying tale of rooks and Victorian retail). January 2019 sees the publication of her new title, Once Upon a River, which has been called ‘bewitching’ and ‘enchanting’.

Born in Englefield, Berkshire in 1964, Diane spent most of her childhood in the nearby village of Theale. After schooldays at Theale Green, Diane studied French Literature at the University of Bristol. Her PhD was on autobiographical structures in André Gide’s early fiction. She taught English at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie and the Ecole nationale supérieure de Chimie, both in Mulhouse, France, and later lectured in French at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She left academia in the late 1990s to pursue writing.

The Thirteenth Tale was acquired by Heyday Films and adapted for television by the award-winning playwright and scriptwriter, Christopher Hampton. Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Colman, it was filmed in 2013 in North Yorkshire for BBC2. The TV rights to Once Upon a River have even sold to Kudos (Broadchurch, Spooks, Grantchester).

Diane Setterfield has been published in over forty countries.

Diane lives in Oxford, in the UK. When not writing she reads widely, and when not actually reading she is usually talking or thinking about reading. She is, she says, ‘a reader first, a writer second.’