Brian Kiteley’s earlier novel Still Life With Insects has been a favorite of mine for years, but in some ways I think I liked The River Gods even more. The novel develops in fragments, traversing about 1000 years of history in a variety of voices. At first it seems to be offering a portrait of a town, but as it goes on that pictures becomes much broader until it’s a complex image of an entire country seen through a local lens — as recognizable historical figures alternate with the author’s own family and, presumably, more fully fictional narrators, Northampton, Mass. becomes embedded in national and global politics, philosophy and literature, the broader American story of destruction and violence in the name success, and cultural changes from witchcraft trials to the sexual revolution and AIDS. What the voices share is a sense of a loss — some of them are, in fact, ghosts — and a connection to Northampton whether lifelong or fleeting, whether they are in town at the time of narration or at war in Africa or traveling in France. The River Gods reminded me a great deal of Angus Peter Campbell’s Invisible Islands, another story of place told in fragments that also makes what seems at first look an out of the way, irrelevant place and establishes it at the center of a much bigger world.

blog comments powered by Disqus