This novel (novella really – even bulked out with short stories, an introduction and a preface it’s still barely 200 pages) explores childhood, and specifically that moment when you wake up from the idyll of innocence and start to see the rest of the world and understand that growing up means change.

At the start of the book Harriet is the classic middle child (though she’s actually the second of four, but Victoria is still very young) – caught between her terribly sensible older sister Bea and her wild younger brother Bogey. She is at once eager to grow up, and purely, blissfully happy with her life in the big house with the big garden backing on to a wide river teeming with life. She writes in a notebook that she hides in the cork tree that is indisputably hers, and absorbs all the details of the world around her.

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Starts out slow - leisurely paced - but it absorbs and absorbs until you're completely immersed. The story of a pre-pubescent English girl growing up in Bengal during the second world war. It's a coming of age story. The writing is luminous. There is great sorrow, joy and angst. This a short novel - under two hundred pages - and yet it doesn't skimp on story. This is for fans of A Passage to India and Heat and Dust - and Godden is the author of Black Narcissus.

I found The River very slow going - the story would be hard to get into, then I'd be in its flow until again I was stopped, by a turn of phrase or a jolting of words that clanged uncomfortably together, jarring or annoying instead of smooth.
I was happy to finish the story, a bit confused that Bogey's death did not have more ramifications or sadness around it. A little life gone and barely any tears.
Reading the two short stories that followed The River, however, put the tale into perspective. It is a tale of Harriet and her growing awareness of herself as self, just as the shorter stories are about their protagonists and how they change with time and what life gives them. How a small thing can reverberate and have a lasting affect, shaping our views, our reactions, our selves.

beautiful, and sad...and very very beautiful

Harriet, the main character, could have been a creation of Lucy Maude Montgomery. The story was a little bit darker than an LMM creation but the passion and imagination of Anne with an "e" lived in Harriet. Or Pat of Silverbush or Emily of New Moon.

It was a tad creepy that a man old enough to be an army captain was interested in the two sisters who were described as children. Or maybe I have a dirty mind. lol

Well written quick read, enjoyable and touching.

What a beautiful gem of a book! Young Harriet, an English girl living with her family along the Ganges in India, experiences the vibrancy of life and change.

Way, way, way up high on the list of books that capture childhood. Similar to Jane Gardam's heroine in A Long Way from Verona, the heroine of this book is a young writer full of questions, puzzling over all she sees and leaping forward with flashes of insight. Here's one of many:

[After an argument among members of her family:]

"Funny," said Harriet to herself, "The world goes on turning, and it has all these troubles in it." She looked down the garden to the tea-table, where Victoria still sat. Horrible-wounds-and-milk-and-bread-and-butter-and-loving-and-quarrelling-and-wars. What was a quarrel but a little war? And there were wars all over the world. They have even come in here, thought Harriet, looking at the big stone house that was her home. But, thought Harriet, this *is* the world.

[And speaking of the house, which is in India, occupied by her British family:

"It had a flat roof, with a parapet where the children played, and the parapet was carved with huge stone daisies. Can a house, a serious house, be carved with daisies? This was."]

Subtle, atmospheric writing which captures the inquisitive nature of childhood with wonderful ease. Thoughtful, skilled and moving. A tender gem.

I enjoyed the descriptive account of life in India-the sounds, smells, views. I was however disappointed in the lack of a solid ending to the story. But having said that, I don't believe there was meant to be one. This is an account of the thoughts and feelings of a young girl reaching the milestone of no longer being a little girl and beginning the journey to womanhood. So many thoughts going through the characters mind, sometimes immature but sometimes philosophical and mature for a girl her age. It is certainly thought provoking and creates questions of your own. I'm not sure if I liked the book or not but I am glad to have read it and may give more books from this author a go.

This book was very short and very vivid. A book about a young girl living and growing up in India and the tragedy that befalls her family. As with all of Godden's books, you truly grow to love and cherish the characters she brings to life with her prose. I found myself wishing Icould flash forward and find out what happens to this family 10 years later...

A friend sent me this book in a mystery book swap thing (which I've yet to reciprocate) back in, uh, July.. But I finally got around to reading something from that box!

There isn't really a plot, which is actually totally okay. I like the main character. I like all the characters, actually.

The setting reminds me of The Secret Garden, very magical... Both stories feature a young girl character I imagine to be about the same age, and both of them lived in India (this book actually takes place there).

There's an awkward puberty talk scene and lots of thought-provoking quotes. I'm pretty sure Harriet is a budding existentialist. I like existentialism.

Thank you Allison for sending me this lovely book - I haven't rated a book five stars in a while. This is a new favourite.

Part of the "River Journeys" discussion at Tuesday Academy, I found this book very easy to read. I definitely want to read more of Rumer Godden's books. She writes of growing up in British colonial India. The characters are easily related to and though the very first paragraph presages loss, you want to know about what happens, in fact the book leaves you wanting even more.

Though it’s not about a journey on a river, the river runs next to the house and plays large in the analogy to life itself. "'It, the river, has to go on.'Whatever happened, a fish death, a wreck, storm, sun, the river assimilated it all." (p.54), "She was on the jetty again. Very often now she went to watch the river. It flowed down in negroid peace in sun, in green strong water. Harriet, now she was growing from a little girl into a big one, was beginning to sense peace. 'It comes from a source,' said Harriet, who learnt geography. 'From very far away, from a trickle from a spring, no one knows exactly, or perhaps they do know; it doesn't matter. It is going to something far better than itself, though it, itself, looks big enough. It is going to the sea,' said Harriet, 'and nothing will stop it. Nothing stops days or rivers,' said Harriet with certainty." (p.57-58), "Harriet thought it was a largeness that had something to do with the river, that began as a trickle and ended in the sea." (p.98), and "Who was it who said you could not stop days or rivers? Harriet could hear the river running in the dark, that was not really dark but moonlight." (p.111)

Well worth reading and I look forward to the discussion.