An outstanding job of merging historical fiction, realism and fantasy

SO MANY reviews have called this book ambitious and I honestly couldn’t agree more.

With nine narrators transporting us through 1903-2023, Serpell sets out to tell a story of colonisation through the maternal lineage of three families. Refusing to be confined to one specific genre, Serpell does an outstanding job of merging historical fiction, speculative fantasy, magical realism and science fiction.

The name of the book alludes to the wafting of human emotions through time. Complex and multifaceted women drive us through this river of a story. And true to the nature of a body of water – nothing stays measured.

One minute the reader is drowning in the characters’ buckets of tears, and the next they’re floating through wobbly love stories only to be thrown offshore with no sense of familiarity.

Throughout the book the imagery of a river stays constant. The river maintains its location while different people and things continuously pass through it, with their stories sailing from one end to the next.

A body of water is never ending and Serpell conveys this cheekily when she does not finish the last sentence of her book. She thrusts the reader into this river and gives them the choice to sink or swim…