The River at Night: A Novel Paperback – August 1, 2017

I don't even know where to start. I'm not an outdoorsy person. I have a phobia of water that is over my head. I can't swim. I have no desire to camp out or commune with nature. I would never in a million years even consider going white water rafting. I would never survive in the wilderness. And this book just reinforced and justified all of that. But I do love to read survival stories, and this one is absolutely gripping. Not just the story, though. I loved the author's voice, her evocative way with words.The narration is in first person POV by Wini, the most reluctant member of the trip. She'd much prefer to bask on a beach in the sun somewhere, but Pia, the natural leader of the group, enthusiastically drags them all to Maine, where they meet up with their guide for the trip. All four of the women are beautifully written, as are the descriptions of the terrain over which they must first hike, and of course the main character of the story, the vast, tumbling river.The river isn't the only danger the group faces over three long days. But I feel like anything else I say would be a potential spoiler. So I'll just say this book is terrifyingly terrific.

Pia, Sandra, Rachel & Wini met 15 years ago. Every year, since then, they get together for a girls getaway. This year, they're going hiking, camping & white-water rafting, in Maine. Their tour guide is a 20 year old college student. They're excited to explore one of the least traveled wild rivers & see places no one's ever seen before. And, they're also nervous about being in the middle of nowhere for 5 days. None of them have been this far from civilization.The river is swollen, churning & alive. Rory (their guide) spent about an hour teaching them the do's & don'ts. They have faith in his ability to harness the raging waters. It's an awesome real-life experience, until Rory drowns & they lose the raft which has everything they need to survive; water, tents, food, maps, etc. Exhaustion & shock begin to show on all of them. How will they make it through the night with no light or source of warmth? They're lost in the wilderness & they need help. The closest town is 30 miles away.They see smoke in the night sky & they climb toward the smell. They spot a woman & her feral son who are living off the grid in a makeshift cabin in the woods surrounded by the heads of animals dripping gore. She is a total freakazoid. She tells her son he has to kill the 4 women. This is when their all-too-real nightmare begins. Do they make it out alive?

The description for this book appealed to me but unfortunately it didn't live up to its potential. The action sequences were well written and the pacing was great but the characters were one dimensional and flat. Add to that some of the unlikely scenarios presented and the whole thing adds up to a book that is mediocre at best. The POV character - Win - is more fleshed out than any of the other players, whose actions and reactions are largely inexplicable, even given the extreme circumstances. Rachel's rigid hard-line bad decisions seem to spring from nowhere and have bad consequences simply, it seems, to move the plot forward. Pia's interaction with Rory in this situation is ridiculous, and her response to the outrage of her unwilling audience is immature and (again) unfounded in any explanation of the character.SPOILERS AHEAD: The scene at the roadside store that seemed to foreshadow the promised 'Deliverance'-style danger never bore fruit. Instead, the danger came from a cartoonish refugee from civilization and her mute son. Fortunately for our characters, Win's dead brother was mute so she knows sign language and this son - raised in the woods from the age 5 - miraculously has also learned to sign, so Win is able to establish a relationship with him, which she betrays in order to blindly follow Pia and Rachel into yet more danger.This book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief and rational thought. I don't mind doing that when I'm reading science fiction or fantasy but in a thriller I expect at least a semblance of realism. I could also have lived with slightly less histrionic navel-gazing from Win about her cowardice if it would have given the author more room to build out the other characters to a point where their actions and responses made sense.

I listened to this book as a download on Audible. It was a "can't put this down, let me listen to just a little bit more..." kind of experience. Several important themes intertwined and kept dancing around each other, first one and then the other coming to the forefront, keeping me thinking and earnestly wondering what was going to happen next. To wit: the warm yet complicated, somewhat competitive relationships between these 4 women; the constant backdrop & presence of the deeply beautiful but very menacing landscape of northern Maine; the twisted, dysfunctional nature of a mother's love/hate relationship to her child; confronting one's own death at the hands of unfair fate; taking responsibility for the choices we make...yes, I related to all of it, and it kept me listening. I have the book, too, but I must say the sound recording was a great way to "read" this particular novel. Women in particular will enjoy this, I think. And maybe sons who have mixed feelings about Mom?