Griffith, Nicola: Slow River
Slow River
Writer: Nicola Griffith
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 343
Ah, the first book review with the new journal style and comments section! Enjoy! ;)
I've had Slow River on my shelf for a while. I'd eyed it for a long time, drooling over the coolness of the cover, and finally bought it on the recommendation of sff_sandcastle. I knew that Griffith's SF titles were feminist in nature, and also soft SF in nature as well. Why I put off reading her work, I'm not sure, save to say what I read largely depends on my moods, and the mood finally hit to read this one.
The premise: Lore is the daughter of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy families, but when she's kidnapped, she becomes a nobody. Naked, beaten, and left for dead, she finds help and solace in a woman named Spanner, an expert data pirate who can give Lore exactly what she needs: a new life, a new identity, and a place to hide from the police, her family, and her kidnappers. But all of this comes at a price, which Lore is forced to pay over and over and over again. Told from three threads, we meet Lore as a child growing up with her family, the post-kidnapping Lore who's rescued by Spanner and the life that follows, and then finally the Lore who's trying to hard to make a new, respectable life for herself while still hiding from her own past and her own fears. But the past keeps nipping at Lore's heels, and she soon finds she can't hide forever . . .
Spoilers ahead.
I have to say, I was really worried about the payoff of this book. The three plots connected within themselves, but I couldn't help but wonder how all of it was going to tie together, if it'd tie together at all. Though I kept forgetting that Lore thinks she murdered one of her kidnappers and therefore the police would be after her, Lore hides the one piece of information that's needed to explain her motivation for her post-kidnapped life: why she doesn't want to go back to her family. There's the further question of, if what we think happened IS what happened, then why doesn't she go back to her family to at least claim her own assets so that she won't be penniless and dependent on someone else for income?
I should've had faith, because not one is the payoff worth it, but it surprised me even in my assumptions. Lore comes from a wealthy family responsible for the equipment and processes that allows for clean water all over the world. She's the youngest: Greta is her adult half-sister who's sharp and efficient and invaluable to the company, her full siblings Tok and Stella are twins, and neither of them are too enamoured of following their mother and father's footsteps, for reasons that soon become clear. Stella was sexually abused as a child. Turns out, so was Greta. And one night when she's little, Lore has a dream of a monster in her room, breathing down her neck, and it terrifies her. She's woken by her mother, who tells her it's nothing to worry about, but older sister Greta helps Lore by giving her a lock that'll keep all the monsters out. It's this act of kindness that Lore remembers the most.
The assumption through-out the entire book is that it's the father, Oster, who's abusing the girls. But it turns out that's not the case at all: it's the mother, Katherine, whom Lore felt the closest too. This revelation was definitely well earned. Lore's been hiding from the truth about her family, blaming her father, never realizing it was her mother who's responsible until she confesses her past to Magyar, who connects the dots and makes Lore see the truth. That was nicely done. Aside from Lore being terrified she killed one of her kidnappers and the police are after her, she's afraid to go back to her family because of what she believed her father had done to them, to her. Once the truth is revealed, Lore is given the encouragement and strength she needs to confront the past and face her family and reclaim her own identity while still carving out a life for herself.
Obviously, there's more to this story than that. Lore's life with Spanner is really painful to read, because it's so obvious how Spanner uses Lore, how she'll use anyone, just to make money and make MORE money. Lore experiences a degradation far beyond what she experienced at the hands of her kidnappers. Sure, her kidnappers left her naked and filmed her over and over crying and begging for her family (which they then posted all over the net), but I don't think there was abuse or even rape involved there. However, with Spanner, Lore ends up getting used and using others, over and over until she can't take it anymore and leaves Spanner for a new life.
With soft SF, it's hard to pinpoint an antagonist, a bad guy, a villain. It's because everyone and everything is so human, and life is rarely black and white. Spanner is not a villain but an antagonist, a woman who hates herself so much that she doesn't care what she does to other people. In the end, it's Spanner who calls Lore's family to reveal where Lore is (for a hefty reward), but fortunately for Lore, Lore had already made the decision to come out of hiding.
One could say that Lore's mother Katherine and her sister Greta are the villains. After all, Katherine abused nearly all of her girls and warped the people they should've become. And Greta, the first victim of that abuse, used her position in the company to gain control and power over everyone and everything in it. It was a nice surprise to finally learn how Lore's kidnapping fit into the larger picture, and that, more than the revelation of abuse, tied the book together more than anything.
I've talked a lot about plot and characters, so I'll back up a bit: the world-building is detailed, specific and well-done. I know nothing about water-treatment plants, let alone futuristic ones, but the scientific detail never felt boring or monotonous. The writing itself was solid too, though it wasn't the kind of book where I fell in love with the prose and couldn't put it down. There's symbol and metaphor dancing all over the pages, and that's a good thing, but if Griffith's prose lacks anything, it's a certain kind of tension that makes you not want to put the book down. Part of it's due to the three interwoven POVs, all from a different mindset of Lore, and part of it's because we just don't fully understand her choices for not contacting her family when she's found her freedom. I mean, we do, but it's not an empathic understanding, it's intellectual, which means the intellect wants to keep arguing with Lore when things with Spanner get too bad.
But abuse is never an easy thing to walk away from, no matter how it looks to those outside of it, and that Griffith handled beautifully. The ending is a little abrupt, but it's a nice resolution. Lore meets her father, reveals the truth, learns what happened in her absence, and reclaims her identity while leaving the promise she's going to hold on to the life she's trying to carve out for herself. Her feelings for Magyar came as a surprise, but a lovely surprise it was, especially in that Magyar returned them. There was a great tension between those two all through the book, not much of it romantic tension either, so that was another element Griffith handled very well.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: this is no action-packed, fast read. Like the title suggests, it's meant to be read slowly, to be absorbed, so that the reader can fully live and experience Lore's life, all three perspectives on it. It might feel a little too slow, a little too dull at the start, but Griffith does a wonderful job focusing on the scientific element of water treatment, and the relationships Lore experiences are painful and real and you want her to succeed. The payoff at the end is worth it, but Griffith takes her time getting there, make no mistake about that. Fans of soft SF and feminist SF can't miss this book. If you do, well, it's your loss.
Next up:
Wolfsbane and Mistletoe edited by Charlaine Harris