A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
Sodden valley is one to savour as elements transform family members
Lucy Wood’s debut, Diving Belles, an exquisite collection of water-infused stories based on Cornish mythology, read like an extended prose poem. She revisits the aquatic theme in her first novel, Weathering, set by a river. Its roaring, turbulent presence forms the backdrop for a story about three generations of a family, meshed together using eldritch, otherworldly language.
Ada and her six-year-old daughter, Pepper, have washed up at a rundown, damp house on the banks of a river set deep in a wooded valley, miles from the nearest neighbour. The late October weather is far from tranquil. Despite its furnishings and eccentric contents, the house seems derelict, crockery floating in greasy sink water “like lonely faces that had been left behind.”
A single parent with a singular child, Ada has returned to this wreck, her childhood home, with the intention of clearing and selling it after the death of her elderly mother, Pearl, who had lived as a near recluse. Yet Pearl’s voice and shadowy spirit linger on in the house and especially in the river — a gruff, weatherbeaten woman appearing to the solitary Pepper on one of her forays outside, and to Ada in reverie, compelling the pair to stay.
Wood has created a work as intricately detailed as one of the delicate pieces of jewelry that Pearl used to restore. Though Pearl is gone, by weaving her narrative into the story Wood makes her as distinct a figure as the other protagonists. Ada wrestles with a peripatetic life, an intransigent daughter, a dwelling that seeps water, guilt at leaving her mother alone and fear of repeating her mistakes. Pepper is an unforgettably drawn child, aloof and eternally questioning, for whom the ramshackle house and its surrounding landscape is both treasure trove and haven.
There is a plot and well-rounded peripheral characters. But the book is primarily about these three figures and the transformative qualities of the elements. The seasonal cycle promises the start of acceptance and emotional rehabilitation. Pepper’s child’s-eye view — wonder and disbelief — and her self-sufficiency, are central. If there are certainties, they can be undone at any time: buried in a snowdrift, a fast-flowing current; in the instant it takes to hear a kingfisher’s cry or to spot a heron. The imagery is rich, without feyness or whimsy.
Pearl’s real or imagined final journey coursing along the river, the water engulfing the house, recalls Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Her memories are of grief, loss and joy — a late pregnancy with Ada, her first tentative wild swim with Ada’s father: “The colour of his body against the water: the creams and coppers and dusty purples. His spine like the lovely bumps in a chrysalis.” The clarity of this description is all the more intense as it comes from a mind aging, and breaking up, and from unfathomable loneliness.
When winter arrives, it holds a dreamlike quality, as Pearl summons up the past: “The woods were so deep, and sometimes there were hoarfrosts so thick in there it was as if the whole world had grown.”
Wood is a creator of worlds. This sodden river valley is one to savour.