Slow River [Paperback]

Water flows through this book. Starting with the river obviously. Griffith is I think deliberately ambiguous about where most of the book is located. At times it seems clearly to be in Yorkshire or Humberside, at others somewhere slightly more foreign - maybe Belgium. Likewise, it sometimes seems to be in a large Victorian era port in decline, at others in a medieval port well upstream. So a sort of amalgam of Hull, Antwerp, York and Ghent.

Then there is the element of purification and redemption. Lore's family made their money from waste water treatment, and later on Lore herself goes to work as a menial in such a facility. Lots of rain, lots of showering, lots of guilt and self-loathing.

And there are the bodily fluids - feminine intimacy is an important part of the book. For this is a feminist book about a girl's relationships with her family and other women. Indeed it's not clear to me why Griffith chose to dress the story up as science fiction - she could easily have set the same tale firmly in the present. But I suppose I wouldn't have read it then, or even have heard of it.

Which could be the reason, of course. Griffith is clearly scientifically literate. Perhaps she wanted techie men like myself to give it a read.

I hesitated between three and four stars. The writing and the characterisation are really pretty good. But in the end the interest in the story to a techie guy made me lean to a "not bad".

Frances Lorien van de Oest is a young woman used to her lifestyle as the daughter of a wealthy family. At the book's beginning she's a victim of a kidnapping plot that goes wrong. Left naked and seriously injured on a deserted street; Lore (as she calls herself) is helped by a stranger named Spanner. Very soon it is made clear that Spanner is not motivated by altruistic concern.

From this strong start, the novel can be an equally fascinating and baffling read. The story is split into sections with Lore's first person narrative of events and then flashbacks in the third person. The flashbacks deal with how Lore gets to know Spanner and of Lore's family life. In all the narrative threads it's evident that dark and twisted motives are being slowly revealed.

Lore almost leaps off the page as a powerful character who is intelligent, educated, worldly and yet isolated, controlled and vulnerable. Used to living in a manipulative environment she finds it easy to spot in others. Her view of relationships in her family, people from the threatening, criminal world she comes to know and then everyday work life builds a lot of tension and draws you into the story.

The author does do a great job of creating a plausible, not too distant, future and generally avoids over-detailed explanations of technology so that everything is smoothly integrated (with one glaring exception). It's also enjoyable to have world spanning locations included in the flashback sequences - they go from lush subtropical islands to barren deserts.

For those good points, there are places where the novel doesn't work so well.

Spanner shows far less depth in characterisation than Lore. Hellbent on criminal activities and the sleazy side of life she is ruthlessly amoral, self-involved and damaged. Even someone verging on sociopathic can appear understandable through the emotional perspective of another character. But here it is missing. The charming personality and attraction she is supposed to have for others never becomes apparent.

Where I think the writing becomes entirely unstuck is with the main plot thread. Which is water recycling. The idea is definitely a good one but, in contrast to the vaguer descriptions elsewhere, paragraphs dealing with water plant processing can be impenetrably dense. The book launches into a level of detail which could be inspired by research papers on freshwater chemistry and marine biology. To give one partial quote:

"A strain, mainly Pseudomonas paudimobilis, for the BTEX and high-molecular-weight alkanes; B strain for chlorinated hydrocarbons; and probably by now the C strain... VC levels told an observer a lot about the health and ratios between aerobic and anaerobic, methanotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria."

Science, real or fictional, doesn't have to cause a headache in readers. With a balanced approach between specialist technical details and dumbing it down too far a story can become stronger (I'm thinking here of Neal Stephenson's early novel Zodiac). Sadly, Slow River doesn't achieve a similar balance and I started skimming over these passages when I saw them coming.

I'm giving four stars as I do think that Lore, the majority of the characters and the overall intelligence of the writing are well worth it. The jargon unfortunately isn't.

This was a brilliant read. By the end of the book I was wishing that there was a sequel.

The book is great because of the characters and their interactions rather than the amazing sci-fi, although there are some exceptionally cool bits of technology uses in there that would definately be on my list of 'toys I would like to have'.