Summary: 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. (Summary and pic from goodreads.com)
My Review: This is a book we read for my book club, and I don’t usually review them for lots of different reasons, but this one I thought was so interesting that I wanted to tell you about it. It is very possible you’ve heard of it, or even read it, but if you haven’t, I definitely think it’s well-worth your time.
One of the things I love about my book club is that we have a lot of different readers. We are a group of women who vary a lot in age—our oldest member is 80 and I, at about half that, am the youngest. (I find it awesome that I’m the youngest, even though not by far). With this group of women we have a lot of different interests, and therefore sometimes we like the books others choose, sometimes not so much, but we always have a delightful time. Although not every single person in my book club loved this book (and those who didn’t love it didn’t actually read it all), almost everyone really enjoyed it, and that is rare for my book club. Isn’t it delightful to enjoy and learn about different things with people who love different things than you?
The interesting thing about this book, and the reason why I chose to review it, is that although almost all of us really enjoyed it, we all enjoyed it for different reasons, which I thought was really fun and interesting. Very rarely does a book offer so much to so many different types of readers and different types of people.
The characters in this story were the strength, I think. My book club friends and I discussed at length different characters and their interesting attributes. They were rich and varied, and there were so many lives we as the readers were privileged to be introduced to. Truly, I think the characters made this story. At times heartbreaking and at other times laugh-out-loud funny, they provided a basis for the story that made it feel complex and rich. Often in books where there are lots of characters I get confused about who is who, especially if they have similar names, but I didn’t have that problem in this book. Setterfield is an expert at not only storytelling, but also at creating characters that the reader connects to, whether we’re rooting for them to succeed or rooting for them to get their comeuppance. I loved that place played such a huge character role in the story as well. I’ve mentioned many times how I love a good atmosphere, and the river and the countryside made for a very compelling and mysterious character in its own right.
I loved the tongue and cheek nature of this book. We as the reader were allowed into the story because the storyteller took us there. Setterfield was able to make the reader feel like they were let in on a secret, being part of this story, and I loved that about it. Sometimes she’d take us out of the story, and we’d step back and look at it from a bird’s eye view, and then we’d be put right back into the action. It was an interesting way of writing and I enjoyed it a lot.
I think this was a great story by a very competent author. The story was compelling and fun, the characters were brilliant, and I really enjoyed this book, as did my book club. I highly recommend!
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
For the sensitive reader: There is some mild language and suggestion of sex, but it is clean. No one in my book club’s sensibilities were offended, and there are some who are very careful readers about this sort of thing.
