River

by Esther Kinsky
River cover
Good Books rating 4.5
Literary Fiction
Technical:
  • ID: 377
  • Added: 2025-09-10
  • Updated: 2025-09-10
  • ISBN: 9781910695302
  • Published: 2017-01-01
  • Formats: 9
  • Reviews: 3
Buy online
Waterstones
Paperback • £12.99

In River, the protagonist detaches herself from her former life and relocates to a London suburb, living anonymously in a modest flat. Her daily solitary walks along the River Lea introduce her to a cast of unusual characters and inspire a collection of found objects and photographs, serving as tangible links to her present and past. The narrative is crafted with language that is both precise and clear, enriching the reader's sensory experience of the river's surroundings. Throughout these wanderings, the woman is drawn into evocative reminiscences of various rivers that have marked different stages of her life—from the Rhine where she grew up, to the Saint Lawrence, the Hooghly, and the Oder. River emerges as a lyrical novel that is simultaneously an ode to nature, the overlooked edgelands of urban life, and the fleeting nature of human existence, filled with poetic imagery and thoughtful meditation.

Reviews
Crowtree Books · 2020-02-17
engaging 4.50

The book defies easy categorization, blending elements of novel, essay, and prose poem with a focus on dreary yet richly detailed borderlands between nature and urban life. The reviewer finds it beautiful and engaging, appreciating its detailed observations and the narrator’s explorations along various rivers.

This review emphasizes how 'River' is a hybrid work that combines different literary forms, resisting neat classification as a novel or collection of stories. The settings are often bleak—wastelands, derelict factories, and marshlands—but the writing brings these places vividly to life through rich detail and careful observation. The narrator’s walks along the River Lea and other rivers become a way to explore life’s margins, capturing a world where nature and urban decay intersect. Despite the dreariness of the settings, the book is described as absolutely beautiful and deeply engaging. The reviewer admires how the narrative quietly unfolds through the narrator’s interactions with people, animals, and the environment, creating a contemplative and immersive experience. The photographic elements and the narrator’s reflections add layers of memory and meaning to the text, making it a thoughtful meditation on place, loss, and observation.

Quick quotes

    Is it a novel? A collection of linked short stories? An extended prose poem? A series of lightly fictionalized essays? The answer, of course, is all of the above.

    Nothing much happens in it, and the settings are uniformly dreary... Yet it is absolutely beautiful and engaging, rich with detail observed in both natural and urban settings.

    She spends her days walking along the unprepossessing banks of the River Lea, exploring... observing plant, animal, and human life, and examining the artifacts of human life.

richardcarter.com · Richard Carter · 2019-08-27
intriguing 4.25

The book is described as a difficult-to-define reading experience, comparable to works by Sebald, with a fragmented narrative that resists conventional plot development. The reviewer enjoyed the novel's evocative and exploratory style, appreciating its reflective and dreamlike qualities.

Richard Carter finds 'River' to be a uniquely challenging but rewarding read that defies easy categorization or plot summary, much like the works of W.G. Sebald. He reflects on how the novel’s structure, composed of tributary-like chapters that flow backward and forward in time and place, offers a meditative exploration of memory and landscape rather than a traditional storyline. This approach creates a dreamlike and provisional existence that is both elusive and deeply engaging. The reviewer appreciates the novel’s poetic and exploratory nature, noting that it captures the fragmented and transient nature of experience through the narrator’s movements along the river and her interactions with the environment. Despite the lack of conventional plot, the emotional and thematic depth make it a compelling and thoughtful work that invites reflection on place, memory, and identity.

Quick quotes

    I enjoyed River very much indeed, even though (or perhaps especially because), like reading Sebald, the experience is very difficult to describe.

    The chapters in River are tributaries, hinting at events, lives, relationships, before whirling and eddying backward or forward to another place, another time.

    It is this very 'provisional existence' that acts as both plot and character of River.

Zorosko Blog · Esther Kinsky · 2017-12-12
poetic 4.75

The novel is praised for its precise and limpid language, filled with poignant images and poetic observations that create an ode to nature and the transience of human life. It captures the narrator's solitary walks by the river as a way to gather memories and imbue natural elements with a deep, sometimes melancholic significance.

This review highlights the remarkable and poetic quality of the novel, emphasizing how the narrator’s solitary walks along the River Lea serve as a metaphorical and psychological bridge between her past and present. The reviewer appreciates how nature and the riverbank's heterogeneous environment are personified, becoming characters themselves that embody a certain sadness and transience, reflecting the human condition. They find Kinsky’s language both precise and transparent, allowing the reader to experience the narrator’s careful observation of her surroundings and the emotional weight she attaches to found objects and landscapes. The reviewer also notes the novel’s subtle narrative style that eschews conventional plot in favor of evocative imagery and reflective wanderings. The personification of elements like electric pylons as “honest custodians” and the detailed attention to edgelands and debris convey a unique poetic sensibility that makes the novel a profound meditation on memory, place, and loss.

Quick quotes

    Written in language that is as precise as it is limpid, RIVER is a remarkable novel, full of poignant images and poetic observations.

    The narrator’s regular walks along the Lea represent an intentional attempt to gather and archive memories and experiences from the natural world.

    The more familiar I became with this flat world in the milky winter light, the more I thought of the pylons as parts of the landscape... honest custodians of this intermediate realm.

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