The River Wife

(Paperback)

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'This is the story of a river and the keeping of magic and the making of water and the nature of love. Some would say that any story of water is always a story of magic and others would say that any story of love was the same. One day love laid down by the river. It slept in a blue patterned shirt and through the afternoon, though I watched, it did not stir but dreamed with the river and when it woke it saw me. Love was not the pattern of leaves and the texture of bark, it was not the underbelly of river or the way of fish, though all that was here was part of it and has gone on beyond it. Love was the passing of the sky across a face, it was the arc of conversation, the yearning to go on and never back, the desire to be something other than I was. I never thought to ask what belonging was, nor how I might be free of it, until I loved Wilson James.'

The River Wife is a fable of love. The river wife - a woman by day and a fish by night - is bound by the river she tends but falls in love with a man. Tender and melancholy, it speaks of desire and love, mothers and daughters, kinship and care, duty and sacrifice, water and wisdom. A myth and a fable both ancient and modern, The River Wife is magical, grave and beautiful - a true original.

'The River Wife holds stories within stories and they are all woven together with a compassionate and unique hand.' Readings

'Few Australians have chosen to write fables that take shape-changing as their central theme. The River Wife tells her story in intimate, seductive prose. A love story must engage readers and persuade them to believe as well. And this one does. The emotions are unfalteringly subtle and persuasive.' The Sydney Morning Herald

'A cool and luscious fable of love...passionate and tantalising, elegiac and profound ... There are echoes of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, Anna Livia Plurabelle from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and even Murray Bail's Eucalyptus. Replete with sensuous, evocative language.' The Canberra Times

'From the first pages of The River Wife, the reader is struck by the beauty of the prose. There is a fluid brook-like quality to the writing. (A celebration of) the beauty of nature and the enduring power of story.' The Age

Author Bio

Heather Rose is the Australian author of nine novels. Her most recent novel, Bruny, won the 2020 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and Davitt Award. Her seventh novel, The Museum of Modern Love, won the 2017 Stella Prize. It also won the 2017 Christina Stead Prize and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. It has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. Both The Museum of Modern Love and The Butterfly Man were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. The Butterfly Man won the Davitt Award in 2006, and in 2007 The River Wife won the international Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather has also written for younger readers under the pen-name Angelica Banks with Danielle Woods. The series has been published internationally and shortlisted twice for the Aurealis Awards for best children's fantasy. The memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here was shortlisted for the nonfiction prize in the Indie Book Awards in 2022. Heather lives in Tasmania.