How to review this book? For starters, it is far beyond my ken. The protagonist was brought up in riches and luxury. The protagonist is a lesbian. She is kidnapped and must adapt to a life on the lam. Being a heterosexual middle-class man, none of these things applies to me, and perhaps that's why, no matter how much I enjoyed reading the book at the time, did I find it so easy to put down and walk away. To reiterate: this book is extremely interesting and well written, but for whatever reason, I found no particular urge to read "just one more chapter before I go to sleep," which is, of course, the hallmark of a great book.
The family of Lore van de Oest has made a fortune in the biotechnology of water remediation/purification. The story jumps around three time-frames: young Lore growing up and not understanding the family dynamics of her parents' frosty marriage and sexual abuse; Lore living on the streets after killing a kidnapper and being helped by the tech-savvy criminal and drug addict Spanner, eventually becoming her lover; and the "present day" Lore, complete with stolen identity, trying to go straight with a drudge job in a sewage treatment plant. Of the three threads, I enjoyed the treatment plant the best - the executive politics, the speculative but plausible biotech, etc.
To me, the book is not a "lesbian" nor even a "homosexual" book. It is somewhat suspicious that everyone Lore meets is homosexual - if this is what the future holds, there will never be another child conceived naturally! Further, it is somewhat sexually graphic. But it doesn't matter - these people just happen to be lesbians, so I would reject the notion that this book should be labelled "homosexual."
There are some neat plot twists (and they never cheat - the twists are fully consistent with the story). As I said above, the biotech stuff is quite interesting, as is the envisioned future communication technology. The characters are not particularly likeable, but are interesting and fully realised and consistent. So why does it only get three stars? Honestly, I don't know. But this is a book I just didn't care enough about to tear through, so I can only give it a "good" rating, not a "great" one.
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Slow River: A Novel Kindle Edition
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Nicola Griffith, winner of the Tiptree Award and the Lambda Award for her widely acclaimed first novel Ammonite, now turns her attention closer to the present in Slow River, the dark and intensely involving story of a young woman's struggle for survival and independence on the gritty underside of a near-future Europe.
She wakes in an alley to the splash of rain. She is naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant is gone. Lore Van de Oest was the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she is nobody.
Then out of the rain walks Spanner, an expert data pirate who takes her in, cares for her wounds, and gives her the freedom to reinvent herself again and again. No one can find Lore if she doesn't want to be found: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who left her in that alley to die. She has escaped...but she pays for her newfound freedom.
Lore has a choice: She can stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she can leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and inventing her future.
But to start again, Lore requires Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needs her and hates her, and who always has a price. And even as Lore agrees to play Spanner's games one final time, she finds that there is still the price of being a Van de Oest to be paid. Only by confronting her past, her family, and her own demons can Lore meld together who she once was, who she had become, and the person she wants to be...
In Slow River, Nicola Griffith skillfully takes us deep into the mind and heart of her complex protagonist, where the past must be reconciled with the present if the future is ever to offer solid ground. Slow River poses a question we all hope never to need to answer: Who are you when you have nothing left?
She wakes in an alley to the splash of rain. She is naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant is gone. Lore Van de Oest was the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she is nobody.
Then out of the rain walks Spanner, an expert data pirate who takes her in, cares for her wounds, and gives her the freedom to reinvent herself again and again. No one can find Lore if she doesn't want to be found: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who left her in that alley to die. She has escaped...but she pays for her newfound freedom.
Lore has a choice: She can stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she can leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and inventing her future.
But to start again, Lore requires Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needs her and hates her, and who always has a price. And even as Lore agrees to play Spanner's games one final time, she finds that there is still the price of being a Van de Oest to be paid. Only by confronting her past, her family, and her own demons can Lore meld together who she once was, who she had become, and the person she wants to be...
In Slow River, Nicola Griffith skillfully takes us deep into the mind and heart of her complex protagonist, where the past must be reconciled with the present if the future is ever to offer solid ground. Slow River poses a question we all hope never to need to answer: Who are you when you have nothing left?
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication dateJuly 29, 2003
- File size552 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The Seattle TimesSlow River now demonstrates that Griffith is the major new voice in the field... In her depiction of a woman struggling for control of her life, Griffith has fashioned a paean to the human spirit, engaging both the mind and heart. It's fashionable to say such books transcend the genre, as if quality had no place in science fiction. Rather, I think Slow River elevates the genre, joining a select few books that shine as beacons of excellence.
San Francisco Chronicle
With her rich imagination, Griffith has created an intriguing world and a character who not only makes her way through it with boldness and creativity, but takes the time to reflect as she goes. Lore confronts moral dilemmas, faces the pain of her past and eventually finds an identity centered in herself rather than in "that most modern of ectoplasms: electrons and photons that flitted silently across the data nets of the world."
Washington Post
[W]ith her first novel, Ammonite...Griffith revealed herself to be fluent in presenting realistic science and its implications, capable of cinematic clarity in her prose, insightful with emotions and character... Slow River is, in tune with its title, a stately, measured voyage down the secret streams inside us all.
Locus
With its persuasive characters trying to form identities in an unstable society, its midnight streets and shabby apartments, and its vast industrial engines, Slow River is a powerful prose poem on issues that are already with us... It's a worthy, and radically different, successor to its author's acclaimed debut.
San Francisco Chronicle
With her rich imagination, Griffith has created an intriguing world and a character who not only makes her way through it with boldness and creativity, but takes the time to reflect as she goes. Lore confronts moral dilemmas, faces the pain of her past and eventually finds an identity centered in herself rather than in "that most modern of ectoplasms: electrons and photons that flitted silently across the data nets of the world."
Washington Post
[W]ith her first novel, Ammonite...Griffith revealed herself to be fluent in presenting realistic science and its implications, capable of cinematic clarity in her prose, insightful with emotions and character... Slow River is, in tune with its title, a stately, measured voyage down the secret streams inside us all.
Locus
With its persuasive characters trying to form identities in an unstable society, its midnight streets and shabby apartments, and its vast industrial engines, Slow River is a powerful prose poem on issues that are already with us... It's a worthy, and radically different, successor to its author's acclaimed debut.
About the Author
Nicola Griffith is the award-winning author of six novels and a memoir. A native of Yorkshire, England - now a dual U.S./U.K. citizen - she is a onetime self-defense instructor who turned to writing full-time after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993. She is married to the writer Kelley Eskridge. They live in Seattle.
Amazon.com Review
Slow River won both the Nebula Award and the Lambda Literary Award for author Nicola Griffith. The book's near-future setting and devices place it firmly on the science fiction shelves, and the characters' matter-of-fact sexuality further label it as lesbian SF. But make no mistake, Slow River is no subgenre throwaway. Griffith's skill at weaving temporal threads through the plot bring protagonist Lore van de Oest to tragic life, and you will genuinely care about her in the end.
Born into a bioengineering family made wealthy by cleaning up after humanity, Lore leads a life of privilege and power. Riches don't bring happiness, though, and the van de Oest family hides its share of dark secrets. Lore is kidnapped, but escapes from her captors when she realizes her family isn't going to pay the ransom. Naked, alone, and wounded, she is saved by the brutally street-smart Spanner, who teaches Lore to survive by exploiting the Net (and human) weaknesses. To learn to trust, though, Lore must face her demons, one by one, until she can begin again.
Griffith's biotech-science details are accurate, and she fits them smoothly into the story in the manner of a cyberpunk master. This novel's real strength is its characters, though. The van de Oest family, Spanner, even characters who appear only briefly, are all distinct and consistent--not to mention very human. Lore herself seems so personal that Griffith's note about the story's disturbing aspects not being autobiographical was probably wise. Slow River is more than good enough to transcend genre and appeal to both queer SF readers and a more broad audience looking for an excellent character-driven SF story. --Therese Littleton
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.From Booklist
Lore Van Oesterling is the wealthy daughter of a powerful bioengineering magnate who, inexplicably, refuses to pay the ransom when she is kidnapped. After escaping and killing one of her captors, Lore allows herself to be taken in and supported by Spanner, a computer data thief, rather than return to the family she now despises. Using her black market connections to obtain stolen personal identity chips, Spanner supplies Lore with a different name and a work history that help her land a job in a water treatment plant. However, as Lore becomes more enmeshed in Spanner's corrupt business dealings and her suspicions about her real purpose at the treatment plant grow, she begins searching for a way back to the world she forsook. Griffith's style is refreshingly lucid and captivating, helping her arouse real concern for her main characters. Yet the book as a whole falls short of the promise of Griffith's award-winning debut, Ammonite (1992), and, despite its sf trappings, works best as a human-interest story about the nature of personal identity. Carl Hays --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in a dystopian future, Griffith's second novel involves a woman's search for identity.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Inside Flap
She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van Oesterling had been the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she was nobody, and she had to hide.
Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped...but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.
Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.
But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped...but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.
Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.
But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents--Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONE
At the heart of the city was a river. At four in the morning its cold, deep scent seeped through deserted streets and settled in the shadows between warehouses. I walked carefully, unwilling to disturb the quiet. The smell of the river thickened as I headed deeper into the warehouse district, the Old Town, where the street names changed: Dagger Lane, Silver Street, The Land of Green Ginger; the fifteenth century still echoing through the beginnings of the twenty-first.
Then there were no more buildings, no more alleys, only the river, sliding slow and wide under a bare sky. I stepped cautiously into the open, like a small mammal leaving the shelter of the trees for the exposed bank.
Rivers were the source of civilization, the scenes of all beginnings and endings in ancient times. Babies were carried to the banks to be washed, bodies were laid on biers and floated away. Births and deaths were usually communal affairs, but I was here alone.
I sat on the massive wharf timbers—black with age and slick with algae—and let my fingers trail in the water.
In the last two or three months I had come here often, usually after twilight, when the tourists no longer posed by ancient bale chains and the striped awnings of lunchtime bistros were furled for the night. At dusk the river was sleek and implacable, a black so deep it was almost purple. I watched it in silence. It had seen Romans, Vikings, and medieval kings. When I sat beside it, it didn’t matter that I was alone. We sat companionably, the river and I, and watched the stars turn overhead.
I could see the stars because I had got into the habit of lifting the grating set discreetly in the pavement and cracking open the dark blue box that controlled the street lighting. It pleased me to turn off the deliberately old-fashioned wrought-iron lamps whose rich, orangy light pooled on the cobbles and turned six centuries of brutal history into a cozy fireside tale. So few people strolled this way at night that it was usually a couple of days, sometimes as many as ten, before the malfunction was reported, and another week or so before it was fixed. Then I left the lights on for some random length of time before killing them again. The High Street, the city workers had begun to whisper, was haunted.
And perhaps it was. Perhaps I was a ghost. There were those who thought I was dead, and my identity, when I had one, was constructed of that most modern of ectoplasms: electrons and photons that flitted silently across the data nets of the world.
The hand I had dipped in the river was drying. It itched. I rubbed the web between my thumb and forefinger, the scar there. Tomorrow, if all went well, if Ruth would help me one last time, a tadpole-sized implant would be placed under the scar. And I would become someone else. Again. Only this time I hoped it would be permanent. Next time I dipped my hand in the river it would be as someone legitimate, reborn three years after arriving naked and nameless in the city.
The first thing she thought when she woke naked on the cobbles was: Don’t roll onto your back. She lay very still and tried to concentrate on the cold stones under hip and cheek, on the strange taste in her mouth. Drugs, they had given her drugs to make her stop struggling, after she had . . .
Don’t think about it.
She could not afford to remember now. She would think about it later, when she was safe. The memory of what had happened shrank safely back into a tight bubble.
She raised her head, felt the great, open slash across her trapezoid muscles pull and stretch. Nausea forced her to breathe shallowly for a moment, but then she lifted her head again and looked about: night, in some strange city. And it was cold.
She was curled in a fetal position around some rubbish on a silent, cobbled street. More like an alley. Somewhere at the edge of her peripheral vision the colors of a newstank flashed silently. She closed her eyes again, trying to think. Lore. My name is Lore. A wind was blowing now, and paper, a news printout, flapped in her face. She pushed it away, then changed her mind and pulled it to her. Paper, she had read, had insulating qualities.
The odd, metallic taste in her mouth was fading, and her head cleared a little. She had to find somewhere to hide. And she had to get warm.
Rain fell on her lip and she licked it off automatically, feeling confused. Why should she hide? Surely there were people who would love her and care for her, tend her gently and clean her wounds, if she just let them know where she was. But Hide, said the voice from her crocodile brain, Hide!, and her muscles jumped and sweat started on her flanks, and the slick gray memory like a balloon in her head swelled and threatened to burst.
She crawled toward the newstank because its lurid colors, the series of news pictures flashing over and over in its endless cycle, imitated life. She sat on the road in the rain in the middle of the night, naked, and bathed in the colors as if they were filtered sunlight, warm and safe.
It took her a while to realize what she was seeing: herself. Herself sitting naked on a chair, blindfolded, begging her family to please, please pay what her kidnappers wanted.
The pictures were like a can opener, ripping open the bubble in her head, drenching her with images: the kidnap, the humiliation, the camera filming it all. “So your family will see we’re serious,” he had said. Day after day of it. An eighteenth birthday spent huddled naked in a tent in the middle of a room, with nothing but a plastic slop bucket for company. And here it was, in color: her naked and weeping, a man ranting at the camera, demanding more money. Her tied to a chair, begging for food. Begging . . .
And the whole world had seen this. The whole world had seen her naked, physically and mentally, while they ate their breakfast or took the passenger slide to work. Or maybe drinking coffee at home they had been caught by the cleverly put-together images and decided, What the hell, may as well pay to download the whole story. And she remembered her kidnappers, one who had always smelled of frying fish, half leading, half carrying her out into the barnyard because she was supposed to be dopey with the drugs she had palmed, the other one rolling new transparent plasthene out on the floor of the open van. She remembered the smell of rain on the farm implements rusting by a wall, and the panic. The panic as she thought, This is it. They’re going to kill me. And the absolute determination to fight one last time, the way the metallic blanket had felt as it slid off her shoulders, how she pushed the man by her side, dropped the cold, thin spike of metal into her palm and turned. Remembered the look on his face as his eyes met hers, as he knew she was going to kill him, as she knew she was going to shove the sharp metal into his throat, and she did. She remembered the tight gurgle as he fell, pulling her with him, crashing into a pile of metal. The ancient plough blade opening her own back from shoulder to lumbar vertebrae. The shouting of the other man as he jumped from the van, stumbling on the cobbles, pulling her up, checking the man on the ground, shouting, “You killed him you stupid bitch, you killed him!” The way her body would not work, would not obey her urge to run; how he pushed her roughly into the van and slammed the doors. And her blood, dripping on the plasthene sheet; thinking, Oh, so that’s what it’s for. Remembered him telling the van where to go, the blood on his hands. The way he cursed her for a fool: hadn’t she known they were letting her go? But she hadn’t. She thoght they were going to kill her. And then the sad look, the way he shook his head and said: Sorry, but you’ve forced me to do this and at least you won’t feel any pain . . . And the panic again; scrabbling blindly at the handle behind her; the door falling open. She remembered beginning the slow tumble backward, the simultaneous flooding sting of the nasal drug that should have been fatal. . .
But she was alive. Alive enough to sit in the rain, skin stained with pictures of herself, and remember everything.
A taxi hummed past.
She did not call out, but she was not sure if that was because she was too weak, or because she was afraid. The taxi driver might recognize her. He would know what they had done to her. He would have seen it. Everyone would have seen it. They would look at her and know. She could not call her family. They had all seen her suffer, too. Every time they looked at her they would see the pictures, and she would see them seeing it, and she would wonder why they had not paid her ransom.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
At the heart of the city was a river. At four in the morning its cold, deep scent seeped through deserted streets and settled in the shadows between warehouses. I walked carefully, unwilling to disturb the quiet. The smell of the river thickened as I headed deeper into the warehouse district, the Old Town, where the street names changed: Dagger Lane, Silver Street, The Land of Green Ginger; the fifteenth century still echoing through the beginnings of the twenty-first.
Then there were no more buildings, no more alleys, only the river, sliding slow and wide under a bare sky. I stepped cautiously into the open, like a small mammal leaving the shelter of the trees for the exposed bank.
Rivers were the source of civilization, the scenes of all beginnings and endings in ancient times. Babies were carried to the banks to be washed, bodies were laid on biers and floated away. Births and deaths were usually communal affairs, but I was here alone.
I sat on the massive wharf timbers—black with age and slick with algae—and let my fingers trail in the water.
In the last two or three months I had come here often, usually after twilight, when the tourists no longer posed by ancient bale chains and the striped awnings of lunchtime bistros were furled for the night. At dusk the river was sleek and implacable, a black so deep it was almost purple. I watched it in silence. It had seen Romans, Vikings, and medieval kings. When I sat beside it, it didn’t matter that I was alone. We sat companionably, the river and I, and watched the stars turn overhead.
I could see the stars because I had got into the habit of lifting the grating set discreetly in the pavement and cracking open the dark blue box that controlled the street lighting. It pleased me to turn off the deliberately old-fashioned wrought-iron lamps whose rich, orangy light pooled on the cobbles and turned six centuries of brutal history into a cozy fireside tale. So few people strolled this way at night that it was usually a couple of days, sometimes as many as ten, before the malfunction was reported, and another week or so before it was fixed. Then I left the lights on for some random length of time before killing them again. The High Street, the city workers had begun to whisper, was haunted.
And perhaps it was. Perhaps I was a ghost. There were those who thought I was dead, and my identity, when I had one, was constructed of that most modern of ectoplasms: electrons and photons that flitted silently across the data nets of the world.
The hand I had dipped in the river was drying. It itched. I rubbed the web between my thumb and forefinger, the scar there. Tomorrow, if all went well, if Ruth would help me one last time, a tadpole-sized implant would be placed under the scar. And I would become someone else. Again. Only this time I hoped it would be permanent. Next time I dipped my hand in the river it would be as someone legitimate, reborn three years after arriving naked and nameless in the city.
The first thing she thought when she woke naked on the cobbles was: Don’t roll onto your back. She lay very still and tried to concentrate on the cold stones under hip and cheek, on the strange taste in her mouth. Drugs, they had given her drugs to make her stop struggling, after she had . . .
Don’t think about it.
She could not afford to remember now. She would think about it later, when she was safe. The memory of what had happened shrank safely back into a tight bubble.
She raised her head, felt the great, open slash across her trapezoid muscles pull and stretch. Nausea forced her to breathe shallowly for a moment, but then she lifted her head again and looked about: night, in some strange city. And it was cold.
She was curled in a fetal position around some rubbish on a silent, cobbled street. More like an alley. Somewhere at the edge of her peripheral vision the colors of a newstank flashed silently. She closed her eyes again, trying to think. Lore. My name is Lore. A wind was blowing now, and paper, a news printout, flapped in her face. She pushed it away, then changed her mind and pulled it to her. Paper, she had read, had insulating qualities.
The odd, metallic taste in her mouth was fading, and her head cleared a little. She had to find somewhere to hide. And she had to get warm.
Rain fell on her lip and she licked it off automatically, feeling confused. Why should she hide? Surely there were people who would love her and care for her, tend her gently and clean her wounds, if she just let them know where she was. But Hide, said the voice from her crocodile brain, Hide!, and her muscles jumped and sweat started on her flanks, and the slick gray memory like a balloon in her head swelled and threatened to burst.
She crawled toward the newstank because its lurid colors, the series of news pictures flashing over and over in its endless cycle, imitated life. She sat on the road in the rain in the middle of the night, naked, and bathed in the colors as if they were filtered sunlight, warm and safe.
It took her a while to realize what she was seeing: herself. Herself sitting naked on a chair, blindfolded, begging her family to please, please pay what her kidnappers wanted.
The pictures were like a can opener, ripping open the bubble in her head, drenching her with images: the kidnap, the humiliation, the camera filming it all. “So your family will see we’re serious,” he had said. Day after day of it. An eighteenth birthday spent huddled naked in a tent in the middle of a room, with nothing but a plastic slop bucket for company. And here it was, in color: her naked and weeping, a man ranting at the camera, demanding more money. Her tied to a chair, begging for food. Begging . . .
And the whole world had seen this. The whole world had seen her naked, physically and mentally, while they ate their breakfast or took the passenger slide to work. Or maybe drinking coffee at home they had been caught by the cleverly put-together images and decided, What the hell, may as well pay to download the whole story. And she remembered her kidnappers, one who had always smelled of frying fish, half leading, half carrying her out into the barnyard because she was supposed to be dopey with the drugs she had palmed, the other one rolling new transparent plasthene out on the floor of the open van. She remembered the smell of rain on the farm implements rusting by a wall, and the panic. The panic as she thought, This is it. They’re going to kill me. And the absolute determination to fight one last time, the way the metallic blanket had felt as it slid off her shoulders, how she pushed the man by her side, dropped the cold, thin spike of metal into her palm and turned. Remembered the look on his face as his eyes met hers, as he knew she was going to kill him, as she knew she was going to shove the sharp metal into his throat, and she did. She remembered the tight gurgle as he fell, pulling her with him, crashing into a pile of metal. The ancient plough blade opening her own back from shoulder to lumbar vertebrae. The shouting of the other man as he jumped from the van, stumbling on the cobbles, pulling her up, checking the man on the ground, shouting, “You killed him you stupid bitch, you killed him!” The way her body would not work, would not obey her urge to run; how he pushed her roughly into the van and slammed the doors. And her blood, dripping on the plasthene sheet; thinking, Oh, so that’s what it’s for. Remembered him telling the van where to go, the blood on his hands. The way he cursed her for a fool: hadn’t she known they were letting her go? But she hadn’t. She thoght they were going to kill her. And then the sad look, the way he shook his head and said: Sorry, but you’ve forced me to do this and at least you won’t feel any pain . . . And the panic again; scrabbling blindly at the handle behind her; the door falling open. She remembered beginning the slow tumble backward, the simultaneous flooding sting of the nasal drug that should have been fatal. . .
But she was alive. Alive enough to sit in the rain, skin stained with pictures of herself, and remember everything.
A taxi hummed past.
She did not call out, but she was not sure if that was because she was too weak, or because she was afraid. The taxi driver might recognize her. He would know what they had done to her. He would have seen it. Everyone would have seen it. They would look at her and know. She could not call her family. They had all seen her suffer, too. Every time they looked at her they would see the pictures, and she would see them seeing it, and she would wonder why they had not paid her ransom.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Publisher
This is one of my favorite books I've ever edited--because it's extremely well written, deals with the near future in a realistic way, and has great characters, plus a narrative structure that's complex and interesting (unlike many SF novels). The science-fictional developments it tackles, primarily bioremediation, are on the cusp of happening today. The story really sucks you in. Other people seem to agree--here are some other fans and what they have to say:
"This is an astonishing piece of work that transcends its official genre--a sexually frank, emotionally
revealing character study.... My profound congratulations on a terrific second novel." - Dorothy Allison, Author of Bastard Out of Carolina
"No second-novel slump for English-born Nicola Griffith, whose first novel, Ammonite, won both
a Lammy and science fiction's Tiptree Award....In both theme and imagery, Slow River invites
comparison to such death-and-rebirth epics as the Sumerian descent of Inanna or the attempt of
Orpheus to bring Eurydice back from Hades...Rarely has this reviewer wished so fervently for a
sequel!"
--The Lambda Book Report
"With its persuasive characters trying to form identities in an unstable society, its midnight streets and shabby apartments, and its vast industrial engines, Slow River is a powerful prose poem on issues
that are already with us...."
--Locus (The Newsmagazine of SF and Fantasy)
When we at Del Rey began to think about the cover for this book, we knew we wanted something different--something that would match the uniqueness of the inside of the book on the outside. Our Del Rey cover designer put together various photo elements, rather than commissioning a painting: the face, the bubbly water, the microscopic creatures behind the "SLOW RIVER" type, the two halves of the face out of alignment with one another. Every element is connected with the setting and themes of the book, and EVERYONE loved the cover, from the author and myself to the art department, the sales reps, and the bookstore employees! (A rare agreement of opinion.)
SLOW RIVER went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year and the Lambda Award. Pretty good for what the author once self-deprecatingly described as "a book about sewage"!
--Ellen Key Harris, Editor, Del Rey Books --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
"This is an astonishing piece of work that transcends its official genre--a sexually frank, emotionally
revealing character study.... My profound congratulations on a terrific second novel." - Dorothy Allison, Author of Bastard Out of Carolina
"No second-novel slump for English-born Nicola Griffith, whose first novel, Ammonite, won both
a Lammy and science fiction's Tiptree Award....In both theme and imagery, Slow River invites
comparison to such death-and-rebirth epics as the Sumerian descent of Inanna or the attempt of
Orpheus to bring Eurydice back from Hades...Rarely has this reviewer wished so fervently for a
sequel!"
--The Lambda Book Report
"With its persuasive characters trying to form identities in an unstable society, its midnight streets and shabby apartments, and its vast industrial engines, Slow River is a powerful prose poem on issues
that are already with us...."
--Locus (The Newsmagazine of SF and Fantasy)
When we at Del Rey began to think about the cover for this book, we knew we wanted something different--something that would match the uniqueness of the inside of the book on the outside. Our Del Rey cover designer put together various photo elements, rather than commissioning a painting: the face, the bubbly water, the microscopic creatures behind the "SLOW RIVER" type, the two halves of the face out of alignment with one another. Every element is connected with the setting and themes of the book, and EVERYONE loved the cover, from the author and myself to the art department, the sales reps, and the bookstore employees! (A rare agreement of opinion.)
SLOW RIVER went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year and the Lambda Award. Pretty good for what the author once self-deprecatingly described as "a book about sewage"!
--Ellen Key Harris, Editor, Del Rey Books --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van de Oest had been the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she was nobody, and she had to hide. Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped...but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed. Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner...and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity of a dead woman, taking over her life, and inventing her future. But to start again, Lore required Spanner's talents - Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner's game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van de Oest to be paid. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B000FBJD98
- Publisher : Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (July 29, 2003)
- Publication date : July 29, 2003
- Language : English
- File size : 552 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 352 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0345395379
- Best Sellers Rank: #466,130 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #398 in LGBTQ+ Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,174 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #4,144 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
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Nicola Griffith is a native of Yorkshire, England, now a dual US/UK citizen. Author of seven novels (Ammonite, Slow River, The Blue Place, Stay, Always, Hild, So Lucky) and a multi-media memoir (And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner notes to a writer's early life). Co-editor of the Bending the Landscape series of original queer f/sf/h stories. Essayist. Teacher. Blogger. Founder and co-host of #criplit. Winner of two (2) Washington State Book Award, the Nebula, Tiptree, World Fantasy Awards, and six (6) Lambda Literary Awards. She holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University, is a wheelchair boxer, married to writer Kelley Eskridge, and lives in Seattle.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
220 global ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 19, 2008
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 13, 2016
I am reading the Nebula Award winning novels in chronological order. This is the winner for 1997.
While I think this book is well-written, I could not get into it. This may be because there are two timelines interspersed with each other. One timeline follows the main character, Lore, as a child growing up gradually in the story until she reaches the point where she is the age of the older version of her at the beginning of the book. The child Lore is written in third person and the older Lore is written in first person. I suppose this is to make it easier for the reader to kept track of who they are reading about. The child perspective leads up to the moment the book starts with Lore throwing herself, naked, out of the back of a moving van. The moment after this is where the adult Lore begins--remeber, these two perspectives are interspersed. The mystery seems to be how did the adult Lore end up jumping out of the van? What led her to that point? And how will the adult Lore solve the problems confronting her for reasons that the reader does not know.
Aside from the fact that I did not like this two perspective approach, although I have to admit it is novel, there are two other big flaws in the book: the ending makes no real sense and more-or-less comes out of thin air, the novel could easily have been written without any science fiction elements at all. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of technical sounding stuff, but this story could be told in virtually any time period. The science stuff seemed an affectation.
Oh, and there is a lot of explicit lesbian sex. Not that I mind sex in a book, but this was a bit over-the-top, almost pornography.
It took me a long time to read this because I did not feel compelled to find out what happens to the characters.
While I think this book is well-written, I could not get into it. This may be because there are two timelines interspersed with each other. One timeline follows the main character, Lore, as a child growing up gradually in the story until she reaches the point where she is the age of the older version of her at the beginning of the book. The child Lore is written in third person and the older Lore is written in first person. I suppose this is to make it easier for the reader to kept track of who they are reading about. The child perspective leads up to the moment the book starts with Lore throwing herself, naked, out of the back of a moving van. The moment after this is where the adult Lore begins--remeber, these two perspectives are interspersed. The mystery seems to be how did the adult Lore end up jumping out of the van? What led her to that point? And how will the adult Lore solve the problems confronting her for reasons that the reader does not know.
Aside from the fact that I did not like this two perspective approach, although I have to admit it is novel, there are two other big flaws in the book: the ending makes no real sense and more-or-less comes out of thin air, the novel could easily have been written without any science fiction elements at all. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of technical sounding stuff, but this story could be told in virtually any time period. The science stuff seemed an affectation.
Oh, and there is a lot of explicit lesbian sex. Not that I mind sex in a book, but this was a bit over-the-top, almost pornography.
It took me a long time to read this because I did not feel compelled to find out what happens to the characters.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 23, 2019
Every time I read a book by Nicola Griffith, I'm angered by the fact that I had to go looking to find her. Her books are nuanced, beautifully written, and incredibly powerful--more so than some science fiction books that were required reading in several science fiction classes that I took in college, or many oft-recommended and more popular books from the same era. But of course they're by a woman and SUPER queer, so while I'm angry that her books weren't the on the generic lists of "classics" or "must reads" that I found online, and instead were relegated to the "best science fiction by women" lists that I dug up later, once I'd realized that I had a hole in my reading history when it came to authors that shared my gender, I'm not shocked. I know how this works. Still, everything that Nicola Griffith has ever writted has hit me hard and made me think deep while also being a joy to read. Slow River is no exception. If you want a story that explores the ways that capitalism treats people like commodities no matter what their income, the ins and outs of working in a sewage treatment plant, and queer female relationships on top of all of that--and does it with beautiful, beautiful words? This is the book for you.
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Top reviews from other countries
Annie
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully constructed character study of a complex female protagonist
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 7, 2021
This is an SF Masterwork, but difficult to describe. It tells the story of Lore, through three different timelines (her childhood up to her kidnapping, the period after her escape when she lives with Spanner, and a few years later when she's trying to build a new life). Its set in the future, but there isn't all that much futuristic stuff in it (mostly social media type online stuff, which must have been very prescient in 1995). It's really very much more of a character piece, gradually piecing together the experiences that have shaped Lore's circumstances and attitudes. It's about perceptions of relationships, surviving abuse of different types, and finding a place in the world to feel safe and loved. I found it compelling from start to finish.
Belochka
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intelligent but beware the jargon
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 8, 2011
Frances Lorien van de Oest is a young woman used to her lifestyle as the daughter of a wealthy family. At the book's beginning she's a victim of a kidnapping plot that goes wrong. Left naked and seriously injured on a deserted street; Lore (as she calls herself) is helped by a stranger named Spanner. Very soon it is made clear that Spanner is not motivated by altruistic concern.
From this strong start, the novel can be an equally fascinating and baffling read. The story is split into sections with Lore's first person narrative of events and then flashbacks in the third person. The flashbacks deal with how Lore gets to know Spanner and of Lore's family life. In all the narrative threads it's evident that dark and twisted motives are being slowly revealed.
Lore almost leaps off the page as a powerful character who is intelligent, educated, worldly and yet isolated, controlled and vulnerable. Used to living in a manipulative environment she finds it easy to spot in others. Her view of relationships in her family, people from the threatening, criminal world she comes to know and then everyday work life builds a lot of tension and draws you into the story.
The author does do a great job of creating a plausible, not too distant, future and generally avoids over-detailed explanations of technology so that everything is smoothly integrated (with one glaring exception). It's also enjoyable to have world spanning locations included in the flashback sequences - they go from lush subtropical islands to barren deserts.
For those good points, there are places where the novel doesn't work so well.
Spanner shows far less depth in characterisation than Lore. Hellbent on criminal activities and the sleazy side of life she is ruthlessly amoral, self-involved and damaged. Even someone verging on sociopathic can appear understandable through the emotional perspective of another character. But here it is missing. The charming personality and attraction she is supposed to have for others never becomes apparent.
Where I think the writing becomes entirely unstuck is with the main plot thread. Which is water recycling. The idea is definitely a good one but, in contrast to the vaguer descriptions elsewhere, paragraphs dealing with water plant processing can be impenetrably dense. The book launches into a level of detail which could be inspired by research papers on freshwater chemistry and marine biology. To give one partial quote:
"A strain, mainly Pseudomonas paudimobilis, for the BTEX and high-molecular-weight alkanes; B strain for chlorinated hydrocarbons; and probably by now the C strain... VC levels told an observer a lot about the health and ratios between aerobic and anaerobic, methanotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria."
Science, real or fictional, doesn't have to cause a headache in readers. With a balanced approach between specialist technical details and dumbing it down too far a story can become stronger (I'm thinking here of Neal Stephenson's early novel Zodiac). Sadly, Slow River doesn't achieve a similar balance and I started skimming over these passages when I saw them coming.
I'm giving four stars as I do think that Lore, the majority of the characters and the overall intelligence of the writing are well worth it. The jargon unfortunately isn't.
From this strong start, the novel can be an equally fascinating and baffling read. The story is split into sections with Lore's first person narrative of events and then flashbacks in the third person. The flashbacks deal with how Lore gets to know Spanner and of Lore's family life. In all the narrative threads it's evident that dark and twisted motives are being slowly revealed.
Lore almost leaps off the page as a powerful character who is intelligent, educated, worldly and yet isolated, controlled and vulnerable. Used to living in a manipulative environment she finds it easy to spot in others. Her view of relationships in her family, people from the threatening, criminal world she comes to know and then everyday work life builds a lot of tension and draws you into the story.
The author does do a great job of creating a plausible, not too distant, future and generally avoids over-detailed explanations of technology so that everything is smoothly integrated (with one glaring exception). It's also enjoyable to have world spanning locations included in the flashback sequences - they go from lush subtropical islands to barren deserts.
For those good points, there are places where the novel doesn't work so well.
Spanner shows far less depth in characterisation than Lore. Hellbent on criminal activities and the sleazy side of life she is ruthlessly amoral, self-involved and damaged. Even someone verging on sociopathic can appear understandable through the emotional perspective of another character. But here it is missing. The charming personality and attraction she is supposed to have for others never becomes apparent.
Where I think the writing becomes entirely unstuck is with the main plot thread. Which is water recycling. The idea is definitely a good one but, in contrast to the vaguer descriptions elsewhere, paragraphs dealing with water plant processing can be impenetrably dense. The book launches into a level of detail which could be inspired by research papers on freshwater chemistry and marine biology. To give one partial quote:
"A strain, mainly Pseudomonas paudimobilis, for the BTEX and high-molecular-weight alkanes; B strain for chlorinated hydrocarbons; and probably by now the C strain... VC levels told an observer a lot about the health and ratios between aerobic and anaerobic, methanotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria."
Science, real or fictional, doesn't have to cause a headache in readers. With a balanced approach between specialist technical details and dumbing it down too far a story can become stronger (I'm thinking here of Neal Stephenson's early novel Zodiac). Sadly, Slow River doesn't achieve a similar balance and I started skimming over these passages when I saw them coming.
I'm giving four stars as I do think that Lore, the majority of the characters and the overall intelligence of the writing are well worth it. The jargon unfortunately isn't.
3 people found this helpful
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Mig Bardsley
5.0 out of 5 stars
A treat
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 20, 2020
I really enjoyed this and I will be looking for more work by Nicola Griffith. Strong female characters and splendid, solid world building. If there was a heavy feminist bias, it worked well in the story and it is beautifully written. I loved it.
Corin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good science fiction and interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 13, 2020
The headline covers it - a recommended read - go for it.
The positive other reviews do the job for me :)
The positive other reviews do the job for me :)
Just another reader
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely stunning
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 17, 2021
One of the best pieces of speculative fiction I've ever read.
