Review: All Rivers Run Free by Natasha Carthew

In a world of unremarkable grey, Ia searches for a rainbow. For 13 years she’s lived in a caravan along the Cornwell coast; an outcast and anomaly among her own people. Throughout this time, her only solace has been the peace afforded her when her husband is away fishing – Ia’s world is two-part; the seen and unseen.

Her seen world comprises hard work, an abusive husband, and a narrow and uninspiring existence that revolves around fish and chores. Yet while he is off fishing, Ia has precious moments to herself. In this fragile private sanctuary, Ia collects an array of objects offered up by the ocean, and recalls her past in painful yet vivid detail. In an attempt to merge her two worlds into a solid whole, Ia seeks something bigger than herself to cherish, adore, and mold into beauty.

Somehow, against the backdrop of a broken country submerged in floodwaters and riddled with gangs, the grey world seems to relent; the ocean brings Ia the most precious gift yet; a splash of colour in the form of a child.

All Rivers Run Free is steeped in the unexpected and is all the more impressive for it. Perhaps the most striking feature of this novel is not the intensely dramatic and beautiful imagery, but the jarring nature of the prose itself. While Ia is a barb in the fabric of society – isolated and rough to the touch – so too is this narrative interrupted by something unfamiliar and distracting, yet undeniably vital.

Carthew has poetry in her, that much is obvious.

As Ia strives to meet her past and dabble in possibility, she must learn her world anew. While undertaking this journey, the reader is not just invited into Ia’s universe, but her heart and soul; her mind. All Rivers Run Free features strikingly chaotic steam-of-consciousness that disjoints a sense of reality and duplicates the protagonist’s fragmented thoughts. Carthew’s style leaves you dumbstruck but yearning; reeling in a comforting strangeness composed of the thoughts of another.

This book is immersion in the deepest, darkest sense. It’s a monumental achievement of providing the unsuspecting reader with an addictive discomfort - a masochism of the mind.

If you read only one book this year, let it be this. All Rivers Run Free is unparalleled – it is gritty, artistic and disturbing in the best sense. This story is equal parts beauty and brutality, and will stay with you long after you think you’re done with it; a pleasant and necessary haunting.

All Rivers Run Free by Natasha Carthew is published by Riverrun books, an imprint of Quercus, and is available in South Africa from Jonathan Ball Publishers.