– 4/5 (Great!)
Release Date: 24 February 2020 (UK)
Publisher: Unsung Stories (UK)
Genre: Adult fiction, dystopian, historical
How I read it: I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Doggerland, 6200 BC. As rivers rise, young mother Shaye follows her family to a sacred oak grove, hoping that an ancient ritual will save their way of life.
London, AD 2156. In a city ravaged by the rising Thames, Shante hopes for a visa that will allow her to flee with her four-year-old son to the more prosperous north.
Two mothers, more than 8,000 years apart, struggle to save their children from a bleak future as the odds stack against them. At the sacred oak grove, Shaye faces a revelation that cuts to the core of who she is; in the wilderness of the edgelands, Shante finds herself unprepared for the challenges and dangers that surround them at every turn. As Shaye and Shante desperately try to hold their families together in the face of disaster, these two young mothers uncover a terrifying truth: that it is impossible to protect the ones they love.
I haven’t reviewed anything for a while as I’ve been working on my own writing, but when Unsung Stories sent me an email about this upcoming title, the blurb made me want to read it immediately. And I’m glad to say I really enjoyed DARK RIVER – it’s probably my favourite Unsung Stories title that I’ve read so far.
DARK RIVER is split between two close POVs – one of Shaye, a woman in ancient Britain at the end of the Ice Age, and Shante, a woman in a future Britain which is seeing its capital city slowly swallowed by the rising Thames. Both women must journey from their homes with a sister and young son in the hope of reuniting with a lover and finding a safe refuge from the floodwaters. Their stories at times mirror each other, with the chapters alternating between the two and lending to a sense of deja vu as one character experiences something similar to the other, even though they are thousands of years apart.
Something that really struck me about DARK RIVER was how atmospheric it was – the landscapes of a past and future Britain are painted in rich, clammy, dirty detail. Shaye’s trek from Doggerland (a now submerged piece of land that once connected Britain and France) is hounded by the rising rivers, whereas Shante’s journey from London to the north is thrown into disarray when what should have been a smooth train trip is interrupted by danger. Shante, her son and sister are forced out into the edgelands, at the mercy of a burning sun and a sky that refuses to rain. I thought Shante’s trip was especially uncomfortable to imagine – sticky, filthy heat tinged with anxiety as food dwindles and portable devices cannot pick up signals.
It is a timely book that confronts both the reality of climate change and the tribulations of motherhood and sacrifice – both women hope to reunite with their son’s fathers at the end of their journeys and give their children a better life in a place not threatened by rising water. While Shaye’s world is one that faces the effects of natural climate change, Shante’s is one suffering the consequences of a slow, man-made apocalypse. I was struck by the descriptions of London slowly being swallowed by the river that divides it, with mentions of the Underground being completely flooded, and the tiny space in which Shante’s family is forced to live (and I thought my London flat was small…).
Despite being speculative fiction, the entire book is imbued with a gritty realism and doesn’t actually take any unbelievable leaps with the truth – it’s far too easy to imagine that a future Britain will look the way it does in this book, with walled cities forcing outsiders to acquire visas before they can enter (think about how London is already a bubble compared to the rest of Britain, exaggerate it, and apply it other cities such as Manchester and Bristol), and the river Thames, which already requires a gateway to stop it bursting its banks, finally reclaiming the land for the water. While little historical truth about the Britain and Doggerland of the past is known, Kechacha still manages to make the land feel both familiar and alien at once.
What I appreciated about this book is that both Shaye and Shante feel like women that anybody could know – neither of them are particularly skilled or special, and must rely on their own strength and hope to protect their children. They are victims of ecological change, but despite the unknowns of their journeys (Shaye doesn’t know for certain if her lover is still alive and waiting for her, while Shante knows that without rain she and her sister and son will die of thirst), they keep moving on, driven by their love for their children – and it’s that love which must hope to stand against the forces of nature.
DARK RIVER is an incredibly atmospheric, emotionally draining and yet completely gripping novel with a bit of a gut-punch of an ending. It forces us to confront the fact that even though humans have wandered these lands for thousands of years, nature doesn’t really care about us, and it’s the connections we have to each other that we must rely on in the end.
Astolat Books 