Customer Reviews

Slow River

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

"Slow River" is one of those books that I read again and again, wearing my copy to a dog-eared mess, giving other copies to friends, keeping in an easily accessible place so I can re-read a favorite passage or look up a memorable phrase.

This book captivated me on so many levels that I'm hard put to say what I like best about it. Griffith's prose, like the "slow river" she describes in the opening chapter, is smooth and languid on the surface, but has hidden depths that slowly rise as the story continues. The structure of the story is excellent; the use of different tenses and points of view (Lore is always the viewpoint character, but sometimes first-person, sometimes third-person) is smooth and never confusing. Griffith's plot construction is first rate, allowing the characters to breathe and grow.

The story itself is equally tantilizing. The glimpses we get of Lore's family are few, but telling; one senses that she is used to living a life of precision masked by glamour. When she loses these things, she loses her identity.

Griffith's use of symbolism is frequent but never heavy-handed or overstated; it would be easy for the PIDA (a type of personal ID), for example, to become just another tired cliche. The symbols merely serve to underline important things about the characters, who come to the forefront, each an individual.

In fact, it's hard for me to cite anything bad about this book. I suppose I could think of something if I tried, but Griffith has that rare knack of enveloping the reader in her story so completely that every time I read it, I forget about analyzing it and just sit back and enjoy the book.

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.

Left for dead by her kidnappers, Lore is found by the mysterious woman Spanner, who teaches her to survive by her wits and to live in the dark world of crime. The two become lovers, but Lore wants legitimacy and to heal from her various wounds (her past with her family, her weeks with the kidnappers), so she leaves, taking a new identity, and tries to fit in. Ultimately, Lore cannot run from her demons forever, and she must either choose to stay in the shadows or to face the truths of her past. Set in the not-so-distant future, "Slow River" weaves Lore's pasts and present together into an astonishingly compelling tale. At the heart of the book is the story of a young woman healing from abuse, and the science fiction aspects are simply the setting and enhancing details. "Slow River" is the type of book that transcends whatever genre in which it's placed: it's more than a science fiction story, more than a coming-of-age story, more than a lesbian love story, more than a story of healing from abuse. This is a book that makes one believe in the power of fiction.

I am a new Nicola Griffith convert. After reading a Blue Place and Stay, I searched for more of Griffith's works. I am not usually interested in sci-fi or futuristic novels. However, Griffith makes her characters interesting and her story-line not only complex and multi-dimensional but she also has a way of feeding you information in bits and pieces. This effect could be frustrating but her transition between first and third person works similar to meeting someone new for the first time and then learning more and more about them over time. Lore (the main character) begins as a privileged prodigy victim of a kidnaping to a twisted victim who in the end discovers her true better self. While the beginning was hard to get interested in (probably due to my aversion to science fiction)... once I got going I was hooked! Enjoy!

This book won the 1996 Nebula Award for best science fiction book of the year. Over several years, I have read all of the Hugo and Nebula Award winners, and seeing that "Slow River" was a recipient, I naturally had to read it as well. However, upon reading the jacket information, I became angry once again with the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America who vote on the Nebula Awards. It seemed that, once again, the SFWA members are being swayed by one or more of several groups who have their own agenda and who are not concentrating on what really is science fiction (or even, in some cases, speculative fiction). The Nebula Award is losing the prestige that it once had by awarding the prize to novels that represent subgenres. Reading the jacket information leads one to the conclusion that this particular book falls in that subgenre of lesbian science fiction (which has a significant following). But, I read it anyway. And, I'm glad that I did. It was pretty good after all and did contain some good science, particularly of waste and toxic controls. There aren't too many science fiction novels that rely on hydrodynamics. I personally may not have voted for it as the best novel of the year, but it is up near the top. A young woman, who is a member of a rich family who control the market of bioengineered organisms needed for the repurification system of water, has been kidnapped. She escapes, discovers that her family were not going to pay the ransome, and hides herself in an English city in the mid-21st century. She has to regain control of her life, find out who was behind her kidnapping, why her sister had committed suicide, and discover who is trying to sabotage the water purification plant where she has obtained a job.

I was so pleasantly surprised when I read this book! If I hadn't gotten a copy
of it accidentally I probably would have passed on it. I think it is the best
cyberpunk novel I have read since Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson.

The style is straightforward, not bs-ish like some cyberpunk stuff I've read.
The story is intriguing, exciting, and moves at a brisk pace. The characters
are compelling and believable, and the setting is perfect.

I hope this review is taken in earnest!!

I know, I know; you're wondering, "Does the world really need yet another lesbian-inflected, near-future, hard-SF novel set in the wastewater processing industry?" Yes, yes it does.

Despite the five star rating, I'll allow that there are a few false notes in the characterizations. I also found the ultimate resolution to be ever so slightly unsatisfying. But in other respects, the book is well written and fresh. I loved it and I'm looking forward to reading some of the author's other books.

I enjoyed reading this book very much. The key to me was that the characters were well rounded and never overshadowed by the science of the story. The pace was very quick, and the characters stayed on my mind after I finished the book. I look forward to reading more or her books.