Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven but Entertaining, July 29, 2004
The action in this science fiction novel alternates between three different phases in the life of the protagonist, Lore van de Oest. One phase, told in the third person and present tense, consists of biographical sketches of Lore's privileged upbringing until a kidnapping gone wrong propels her, naked and injured, into a new life on the streets. The second, told in the third person and past tense, tells how she survives for three years on the mean streets with the help of an amoral hustler called Spanner, whom she joins in a life of crime. The third, in which Lore speaks in the first person, is about how Lore, now separated from Spanner, tries to go straight and build a life for herself as a shift worker in a high-tech water purification plant.
Author Nicola Griffith leavens each section with vivid futuristic detail, and she is an evocative writer with a sharp eye for character. As a writer, her choice to switch between first and third person, past and present tense -- her biggest gamble -- is also her greatest failure, as the transition can sometimes be jarring. Other than that, her prose flows as smoothly and deeply as the river of the title.
Two of the three parts of Slow River -- the ones about street life and privileged life in the near future -- are above average examples of basic science fiction themes, most worth reading for Griffith's prose. The third, about Lore's employment at the extremely well-imagined purification facility, is more original. The atmosphere of low-grade tension inherent in the possibility that some malfunction there will cause an ecological catastrophe gives an element of suspense to Griffith's novel that keeps the reader turning pages.
Or, at least, it did me. It says something, about either Griffith or me, that I read as fast as I could through chapters about surefire topics like high-tech crime and futuristic luxury because I was desperate to find out what happens to the poorly-paid denizens of a water treatment plant. It takes talent to make this sort of topic so absorbing, but Griffith has no shortage of that -- and her peers agree, and awarded Slow River various awards, including the prestigious Nebula.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Top notch SF, January 25, 2005
I was surprised at some of the poor reviews given this book and have an idea that these stem from those picking up books from a list of Nebula Award winners. This book is not at all your typical SF story, indeed it feels much more like a mainstream story with some SF aspects than it does an SF story. I'm an avid reader of both science fiction as well as mainstream fiction, so this holds a good deal of appeal for me.
Griffith's prose is wonderful and showcases a beauty of language seldom seen in science fiction. Her characterization is also near perfect. I won't spend time discussing the plot as that's been handled amply by the other reviewers, but I will echo one other person's thoughts: The storyline that has Lore working at a sewage plant is, surprisingly, every bit as engrossing as the ones that deal with her kidnapping and her high society upbringing. To me, that says a good deal about Griffith's talent as a writer.
As for the sex scenes, which some people describe as being nearly constant in the book, there are actually about four or five scenes taking up somewhere around ten pages of the book (not each, but in total). Additionally, they're not placed in the story without purpose.
Overall, an excellent book. Personally, I'm quite glad that it won a Nebula. It's certainly desereving.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't let the "subgenre" label fool you, February 12, 2004
In SF, unlike its sister genre fantasy, there has been a history of dealing with issues of homosexuality in an unflinching, honest fashion (instead of fantasy's fey princes and twisted perverts) and while those issues have not really grasped mainstream SF, it's always been there, blatantly stated in Samuel Delany writings and others, lurking in Disch, in Ballard, from the sixties and seventies onward, incorporating sexuality matter of factly, almost explicitly so. There have been subgenres, of course, as there are in any major genre, but for the most part it's not really shocking or scandalous to see homosexuality represented in SF. And so awarding the Nebula to this novel both gladdens and confuses me. Gladdens, because it is a fine, tightly constructed novel, exploring its characters with a depth normally reserved for such masters as Margaret Atwood (when it comes to charactization and studies, at least). Confuses, because there is nothing really explicitly "groundbreaking" about it. The plot, while entertaining and thought provoking, breaks no real new ground, either by busting down nonexistent barriers regarding homosexuality in SF or providing a mindwarping new way of looking at the artiface of Story. The story itself, on the surface, is simple. Lore, a children born into a ridiculously wealthy family is kidnapped and tormented. Eventually she escapes and instead of going back to her family tries to live out among society, where she meets master scammer Scanner, among other people. Eventually she tries to form her own identity, working as the lowest employee on the type of thing her own family patented. The novel's structure is interesting, in that it jumps between Lore's childhood and her tightly sketched family (even the briefly glimpsed ones feel real, and even small moments resonate), then to her life with Scanner and then to the present day where she finally finishes the journey of finding herself. The fact that Lore is a lesbian is treated astonishingly well, there is no cliched "coming out" moment, she begins the story as a lesbian and that is just the way things are. People turned off by homosexuality probably should avoid this book, while I didn't find the scenes too explicit (certainly nowhere near pornographic, as some reviewers have tried to claim) and frankly they don't take up too many scenes in the novel itself, for some people, one scene may be one scene too many. And those people are entitled to their opinions and shouldn't read things that make them unhappy or uncomfortable. And this is a novel that deals with unpleasant things, and faces them boldly and obliquely, much like we do in real life. Slow River is a good book, perhaps even a great book. Does it deserve to stand up with past Nebula winners such as Dune or Ender's Game or A Time of Changes (and before you think that I'm biased toward SF written by white males, I thoroughly enjoyed Russ' The Female Man, so there) . . . I don't think so, but I also don't know what the competition was that year. It doesn't really matter. If the giant block letters proclaiming it to be a "Nebula Award Winner!" capture your attention enough to entice you to read the book, then that's all well and good. For in the end it's a fine example of SF doing what it does best, reflecting our lives and taking real people and real emotions and putting them in a fantastic setting, so while the background may be unfamiliar, the rest isn't.
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