My latest, and last, attempt to try a book by Rumer Godden. Her style isn’t for me.

Beautifully written, The River reminded me of the river in Jayber Crow or Peace like a River, it is a metaphor for change, slow change that happens to all of us.

The River is somewhat a coming of age, in a sense of the girls are at the age transitioning from girlshood to womanhood. More then that, it is about transformation and how we need die to self in order to be reborn and fully live .

‘it is too hard to be a person. you don’t only have to go on and on. you have to be — You have to be tall as well’

well u know what rumer godden u make a point and sometimes i just don’t want to be tall

this had two short stories at the end too, the first was called the red doe and the second the black ram, the black ram was very sad, didn’t like jassoof having to leave the injured goat on the snowy mountain so he didn’t freeze to death too, actually very awful. red doe was about someone killing a doe n feeling all weird about it and then getting married

anyway the river:
good, sad, i liked it. tldr is basically big bad snakes and siblings and poems. idk how old captain john was but was giving slightly nonce vibes i reckon. interesting this was snake heavy as me n my mum were having a conversation about snakes in india last week and how seriously everyone took them, my ma once put a toy snake in my grandads suitcase and he took it outside to kill before he realised it was made of rubber. makes the point of that if ur in rural india and get bitten by a big sup then that’s curtains for u rlly isn’t it. liked the bit about growing up and having to make peace in urself about that and how relationships between siblings change and adjust as they all grow and change

This is the second time I have read this beautiful book, but I have watched Jean Renoir's movie version many times.

A long time since I'd read any Rumer Godden, but I found this one a bit disappointing. It's a novella really and dealt with difficult subjects, but somehow seemed to skim the surface.

I truly loved this book. It took me to another place with its descriptions and sights and smells and "earthiness." It gave me words for things I didn't know I needed words for. Beautiful and happy and sad. Rumer Godden has never disappointed me yet.

The river flows, and a child begins to grow up.
Beautiful, her novella about growing up in India.

I read several of Rumer Godden's novels in my teens, and loved her delicate capturing of the transition between childhood and adulthood, so when I found a couple of her books in the Oxfam bookshop recently I couldn't resist buying them. The River is a very short book, the story of Harriet, the second child in a European family living on the banks of a river in East Bengal (based, as the introduction makes clear, on Godden's own childhood home), during the course of an Indian winter which is the start of growing up for her, bringing her first real experiences of birth, death, love and loss, as well as her discovery of a talent for writing. It's quite insubstantial, and I didn't love it as much as I loved some of Godden's longer novels when I read them, but it's beautifully written and perfectly captures the confusion and isolation of suddenly not being a child any more, but still not being a grown-up.

What a lovely little book this is. Unlike the other Rumer Godden books I’ve read, The River is focused on one character; as in A Fugue in Time, though, the central question is about change and what remains. The one character is Harriet, a middle daughter in a European family in Bengal, India (though the narrator proclaims at the outset that the river could be anywhere, and the war happening in the outside world could be any war). In the awkward phase between playing with her younger brother and seeing that her older sister is growing up, Harriet thinks a lot about change and writes poems and stories, some of which she knows are good. At the beginning, she and Bea are learning Latin, and the narrator comments “It is strange that the first Latin declension and conjunction should be of love and war.” I suppose the word should be “conjugation,” but the conjunction of love and war remains a central theme. In the Michael Joseph edition, 1946, it doesn’t look like a children’s book, but at just over 100 pages, it might be seen as one. That shouldn’t stop adults from reading it with pleasure.

Another of my book for each year since birth - in this case a reread.

This book works very well as a movie but as a book I had two problems with it (1) in a few cases there seemed to be inconsistencies in the time line and (2) for the symbolism, I often felt I was being hit over the head with the obvious. However, it is particularly interesting for its occasional use of what would now be considered potentially racist language and for the ease with which it mixes culture in a way uncommon for the time it was written.

'When you died, you did not belong to yourself, nor to your family; you belonged to custom, and places and countries and religions.'

River is my most recent read of the five and only read once a year or two ago. I include it though because I can’t stop thinking about this book. It is absolutely beautiful, true and the only thing better than British authors are British authors who live/d in India and this is everything a British/India novel ought to be.
Rumer Godden, a woman born in 1907 is one of my all-time favorite authors, she is a particularly good children’s author as well; highly influenced by things Eastern, religion, dance/ballet, (she ran a multi-race dance school in India in the 50’s) and dolls. This book somewhat autobiographical was made into a color film by a Frenchman in ’54? which is supposed to be quite good. It is next in my Netflix queue and I can’t wait to watch it.
Sarah McIlrath