#Review - Once a Monster by Robert Dinsdale

Once a Monster
Robert Dinsdale
Pan Macmillan, 21 September 2023
Available as: HB, 512pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529097375

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me an advance e-copy of Once a Monster via Netgalley to consider for review.

In 1861, ten year-old orphan Nell makes her living mudlarking - dredging up anything saleable from the muddy banks of the river Thames, part of a gang controlled by Benjamin Murdstone. Once a mudlark himself, he rose to wealth and then fell again, but is still looking for that one find which will restore his fortunes. Or rather, his gang of children are looking for it. 

Elsewhere in London, a mysterious man named Minos works in the labyrinthine tunnels of the sewers then being constructed. Enormous, misshapen (and are those signs of horns on his head?) but very strong, he's an object of curiosity  and even dread, but his origins are obscure. Lost in his dreams of other lives, other ages, he will develop a close connection with Nell. Both of their lives will be wrapped up with that of Sophia, formerly a dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet, but now hiding herself away in the slum of Seven Dials.

To get the obvious out of the way first, yes, Once a Monster does have echoes of Dickens. You could see Murdstone (itself a Dickensian name) as a sort of Fagin, with his ragged gang of kids. The theme of fortunes made and lost on a twist of fate in the teeming city of trade is also familiar, as is the passion and the anger at those ground down, at the lives wasted. But this isn't a Dickens pastiche. Once a Monster is actually much stranger than that. The author of The Toymakers and Paris by Starlight doesn't hide his sympathies - and, as I have said, his anger - but Once a Monster is much more than a novel of Victorian inequality and oppression. 

At its centre is Minos, whose name - and the hints of his physique, as well perhaps as his preferred refuge in tunnels and caves - give us a pretty strong indication of who or what he may be, or have been. Minos's story is a moral story, a story of growth and struggle, his history echoed by and indialgue with a whole gallery of characters. Dinsdale gives us a fascinating characters study of who Minos is and who he may become. In a city that, like a monster, devours the innocent, there is plenty of darkness to go around and it may enfold Minos yet: but it's not - or not all - coming from him and the same central dilemma is posed to all the characters here: to rise - trampling and consuming others - or to sink into the mudflats of Ratcliffe or the rookeries of Seven Dials. Minos's deeds - good or bad - are written on his frame, the result of hundreds and hundreds of years wrestling with this paradox, but the same truth captures Murdstone, his only friend Dr Bantam, Sophia and indeed Nell herself.

In this book, trades are offered, lives bought and sold. Revenge is a theme, but it's always second to trade, trade, trade, the network of deals and promises that forms the very fabric of London. Just as Minos loses himself in dreams and nightmares of the Labyrinth, the narrow streets of the city, the claustrophobic passages in the Alhambra Circus theatre, and the new, branching swedes, confine and direct the passage of those caught up in them. All are lost, whether they know it or not, in need of a thread to guide them out.

In a masterpiece of fantasy, Dinsdale illustrates the tunnels and chambers that we all wander - showing how the only way out is found through that thread of kindness, caring, and trust (and perhaps a bit of luck). There are no real villains here, I think, apart from the dark systems and constraints that oppress us all. No real monsters, except the monsters that we turn ourselves - and each other - into. Of those, Minos may be the strangest, but he is not unique, simply the most visible of his type, showing something common to all.

This is an extraordinary book, and it's one I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about Once a Monster, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Cover design by Sarah Whittaker

Once Upon a River
Diane Setterfield
Doubleday, 17 January 2019
HB, 420pp

I'm grateful to Doubleday for providing a free advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

Well, this book is simply glorious.

Like all the best stories, it opens (I won't say "begins" because the beginning was much earlier, a number of tributary tales feeding into the main course) one dark night when the company are gathered at an inn.

The inn is The Swan at Radcot on the Thames, famed for its storytelling. And storytelling is important in this... story. Setterfield tells her tale, approves the social importance of storytelling in her 19th century setting (with various, wonderful, digressions into local lore, legends, dreams, the histories of her characters - all little stories) and builds into it alternative versions and possibilities. Her characters muse on the past, anticipate the future - with hope, fear, uncertainty - and explore the present as it unfolds.

Back to that dark night. An injured man staggers into The Swan from the river, carrying a dead child. But hours later, she is, it seem alive. Was she dead or not? Those present tell and retell the story. There are various approved additions and endings, while the drinkers at the inn frown on other alternatives. As more happens these alternatives and variations ebb and flow in popularity, joining a repertoire of popular tales which are called for repeated, altered and reworked.

As the story - stories - spreads outwards, though,  it has an impact, sets things in motion, causes a stir.

Something is going to happen.

Across this little corner of Oxfordshire, people get ready. There's Robert Armstrong and his wife Bess, concerned for their little granddaughter, Alice. The Vaughans, whose child vanished into the dark two years ago. And strange Lily White, living in the damp cottage by the river, haunted by visions of her sister Ann.

Three claims on the mysterious girl. In turn these draw in others. The local nurse, Rita Sunday. The Armstrongs' ne'er-do-well son, Robin. A strange man who smells of yeast and strong spirit. A photographer, whose mission is to document the river and its people.

Even a sagacious pig.

Some are searching for the truth. Some want an advantage. Others just want the pain to end.

It's an entertaining read from start to finish. There is villainy here and darkness - rape and murder have taken place. But there is also love and loyalty and longing. Taking place in the year between one winter solstice and the next, Once Upon a River pays great attention to the seasons, to the rising and falling of the river, its quiet flow at some times and raging flood at others. There are countless memories - those stories, again - of deaths in the water, both intended and accidental. And we are told of Quietly, the boatman, who takes travellers whose time has come "across the river".

Throughout, Setterfield manages to make her world of water, oar, bridge, inn and cottage a place slightly distinct, a little kingdom where things are just a little bit different. It is, of course, a world akin to those of other river stories (I thought of The Wind in the Willows and also of Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage, which also features an inn) and I could somehow feel the presence of that weight of story behind the writing, diverted the flow, perhaps, here and there, like a submerged stone or a shallow or deep place that you can't see directly. It's almost an eerie feeling, but enjoyable at the same time.

So, like Poohsticks dropped in the water, Setterfield's characters drift downstream, bumping up against one another, separating, getting caught on obstructions or swept along by a current. Every one of them is a gem, whether it's the mixed race Robert Armstrong, wealthy but always on the outside of things, his frankly villainous son, the practical and self-contained Rita with her collection of medical books, Henry Daunt the photographer or poor Lily White. They are all real people, inhabiting this landscape which always, in the end, comes down to the river (excursions further off - to Oxford, to Lechlade (known for its dragons) or even London - feel strained, as though without the river things will go wrong, go off. I mentally cheered each return to the river, to the Swan.

It's a vivid, enchanting and compelling story, like nothing I'd read before.

A real treat.