This blog has been quieter than usual over the last couple of weeks. That’s mainly because it took me more than two weeks to get through this book.
Since this is only a slimmish volume (a shade under 300 pages), that’s not the most encouraging sign.
I chose this for the book group for this month, so I was obligated to finish it.
It’s an autobiographical account of a summer in Katherine Norbury’s life when, after losing a baby, she started following assorted rivers to their sources, along with her tweenage daughter. We also learn of her past, how she was abandoned as a baby and adopted, and her mission to contact her birth family after she finds she has breast cancer and she needs to know the family history.
Katherine Norbury is the wife of the ever-splendid Rupert Thomson. This was actually the main reason I selected this book, to gain more of an insight into the man himself. On that basis it was a partial success at least, as I could see how some of the themes in his books were influenced by events in his real life.
It’s not actually a badly written book. There are some fantastic descriptions of the landscapes she encounters. The last 70 odd pages had true emotional depth. I just struggled to motivate myself to pick this up when I put it down.
The problem with this book is almost certainly a me thing rather than through any fault in the book itself. I found it a little bit dull and repetitive. The prose is nice, in some places it's really quite beautiful, but it just never grabbed me to drag me through the story.
I should have realised when the best review for the front cover is something as bland as "A lovely book" that it wasn't going to be a page turner.
So overall, nicely written but the story was less than inspiring for most of the book. It picked up in the last third, but too little too late.
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