The Riverman by Aaron Starmer

The Riverman by Aaron Starmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

DESCRIPTION: "To sell a book, you need a description on the back. So here's mine: My name is Fiona Loomis. I was born on August 11, 1977. I am recording this message on the morning of October 13, 1989. Today I am thirteen years old. Not a day older. Not a day younger."

Fiona Loomis is Alice, back from Wonderland. She is Lucy, returned from Narnia. She is Coraline, home from the Other World. She is the girl we read about in storybooks, but here's the difference: She is real.

Twelve-year-old Alistair Cleary is her neighbor in a town where everyone knows each other. One afternoon, Fiona shows up at Alistair's doorstep with a strange proposition. She wants him to write her biography. What begins as an odd vanity project gradually turns into a frightening glimpse into a clearly troubled mind. For Fiona tells Alistair a secret. In her basement there's a gateway and it leads to the magical world of Aquavania, the place where stories are born. In Aquavania, there's a creature called the Riverman and he's stealing the souls of children. Fiona's soul could be next.

Alistair has a choice. He can believe her, or he can believe something else... something even more terrifying.

REVIEW: Aaron Starmer's The Riverman grabs the reader by the throat from the first sentence and doesn't let go until well after the last page is turned.

A dark, haunting sense of loss and foreboding, overlaying a persistent mystery, permeates this multi-layered, sophisticated story, which merges fantasy and reality. By the end of the novel, the reader wonders which is which, the fantasy or the reality, and where the truth - if it exists - lies.

The novel tells of a six week period during the life of a 12-year-old boy, Alistair, at a time during which he renews his old friendship with Fiona Loomis, questions other friendships, and wonders about the people he thought he knew.

Fiona says she chose to tell him her autobiography because "he is a boy who keeps secrets." Which begs the question: what other secrets lie beneath the surface of this seemingly tranquil community?

Told in the first person by Alistair, by the end of the story the reader is left to wonder if that, too, is not also a mystery… Perhaps Alistair is no longer 12… Perhaps he is now an older adolescent. Perhaps he is even a man.

Strong in establishing a pervasive uncertainty, Starmer never tries to trick the reader. Instead, he allows the story to unfold itself, as if it follows its own natural, developmental path. You never feel like you've been manipulated and there is not a single jarring moment.

Every sentence, every paragraph, and every page flows seamlessly from one to the next. By means of Starmer's superb writing, one gets the sense of his immense respect for the story's own integrity and life, for the persistence of its characters - who insist on being who they are and not what the author or anyone else, might want them to be; and respect for the reader, who is drawn into the story and feels almost to be part of it.

I finished the book about 24 hours before writing this review and read it over three days. (I typically have four books on the go at a time.) Throughout those three days and the next, The Riverman dwelt in the back of my mind.

I can only hope that Book 2 will become available soon. And then Book 3, to complete the trilogy.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best of 2014…," wrote Betsy Bird, writing in the Fuse #8 blog of the School Library Journal.

I couldn't agree more. If The Riverman doesn't win multiple awards, I will question the book awards business.

Meanwhile, I highly recommend The Riverman for anyone over the age of 12, including adults.

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