![]() The doll turns out to be the corpse of a little girl, and then not a corpse at all to the astonishment of Rita, the local nurse and midwife, the seemingly pulseless, waxen child revives, and for weeks the habitués of the Swan can talk of nothing else. ![]() On the evening of a winter solstice in the 19th century, a drenched man with a bashed-in face bursts through the door with what appears to be a large doll. Once Upon a River takes more than a few pages to begin properly, even though it kicks off with a promisingly dramatic event that electrifies the regulars at the Swan, a riverside inn in Oxfordshire renowned for the quality of its storytellers. Lest you miss Setterfield’s point, she makes it explicit: “A river no more begins at its source than a story begins with the first page.” ![]() “Instead it winds its way in time-wasting loops and diversions.” In fact, where the river begins and which if any of its tributaries can be conclusively identified as the Thames itself is debatable. ![]() “T he river does not seem particularly intent on reaching its destination,” remarks the narrator of Diane Setterfield’s third novel, referring to the Thames. ![]()
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