Book Review: Slow Rive by Nicola Griffith
Jun. 5th, 2015 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Slow River
Author: Nicola Griffith
Published: New York: Ballantine Books, 1995
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 352
Total Page Count: 162,674
Text Number: 475
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After her abduction, once-wealthy Lore is left with nothing but the questionable aid of a backstreet hacker named Spanner. Slow River is subtle at its best, overwritten at its worst. The relationship between Lore and Spanner is a nuanced dialog about class, abuse, and trauma recovery; Lore is granted strong conflicting emotions about Spanner without erasing the problematic aspects of their relationship. But the book has a flow-sundering tripart narrative—each with a different tense/PoV—and hamfisted, repetitive themes. It's also set in a near future which is sometime secondary backdrop to the more interesting interpersonal aspects and sometimes involved ridiculously intricate explorations of theoretical sewage treatment. (I was reminded of Hugh Howey's Wool: the minute practical details are researched, convincing, strangely compelling, and yet inane upon reflection.) The sum is a strange little book, well-intended, sometimes heartbreaking in its subtlety, sometimes off-putting in its heavy-handedness. I don't particularly recommend it, but what I liked about it I truly loved.
(I was also struck by the similarity to Kelly Eskridge's Solitaire, and then discovered that the two are partners; I'm also not the first reviewer to make the connection. Of the two, I find Solitaire the more successful.)
Author: Nicola Griffith
Published: New York: Ballantine Books, 1995
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 352
Total Page Count: 162,674
Text Number: 475
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After her abduction, once-wealthy Lore is left with nothing but the questionable aid of a backstreet hacker named Spanner. Slow River is subtle at its best, overwritten at its worst. The relationship between Lore and Spanner is a nuanced dialog about class, abuse, and trauma recovery; Lore is granted strong conflicting emotions about Spanner without erasing the problematic aspects of their relationship. But the book has a flow-sundering tripart narrative—each with a different tense/PoV—and hamfisted, repetitive themes. It's also set in a near future which is sometime secondary backdrop to the more interesting interpersonal aspects and sometimes involved ridiculously intricate explorations of theoretical sewage treatment. (I was reminded of Hugh Howey's Wool: the minute practical details are researched, convincing, strangely compelling, and yet inane upon reflection.) The sum is a strange little book, well-intended, sometimes heartbreaking in its subtlety, sometimes off-putting in its heavy-handedness. I don't particularly recommend it, but what I liked about it I truly loved.
(I was also struck by the similarity to Kelly Eskridge's Solitaire, and then discovered that the two are partners; I'm also not the first reviewer to make the connection. Of the two, I find Solitaire the more successful.)
