The River King took awhile for me to get into. At first the characters didn't interest me. I didn't care about the ghost story, the deceased horrible professor and his wife that never ran away (but should have), and all the crotchety adults that seemed to settle for their unhappy lives in a desolate town at an eerie boarding school. Even Betsy, whom I like and seemingly gets the attention of the entire town still didn't do anything for me.Then I was introduced to Gus and Carlin, two teenagers that attend the boarding school, coming from poverty, but wanting to fit in, so they invent happier stories about their lives. Their characters are full of dimension. I instantly fell in love with Gus and it makes me angry his teachers find him a slacker and his peers think he is disgusting. And I like Carlin just for her independence even though I felt angry with her for not seeing things for what they were. And I loved them together. Regardless of Carlin and Gus having a sense of right from wrong, and inherently being good decent people, they still can not prevent the cruel and hidden hearts of some of their classmates. What happens still leaves me sick and uncomfortable. It made me not want to read the book anymore yet I couldn't stop turning the pages, especially when the police officers are introduced because I finally felt that maybe there were adults in this book worth a damn. So I kept reading because I wanted justice. I wanted all the secrets revealed.Quite frankly, I can't believe it . I want to scream at all the tired worn down adults that did nothing to prevent people from getting hurt. And it's sad that there are parts of this depressing book that happen in real life and the same type of adults do nothing about it.Another point of interest for me involved the similarities between The River King and the story of the Fisher King. Both involve someone in need of saving and these literary comparisons added some interest to this book for me. I think this would be an excellent book to discuss in an English course. There are a lot of literary elements to discover within its pages.It's a good book. Out of all the Hoffman books I've read this has the most details and character development, though if I am honest I like her distant dream like type books better when reading for fun. This is just so heavy and depressing but still worth the read. 3.5 stars.
I want to like Alice Hoffman books but they're really hard for me to get into. I'd like to think that I just read them at bad times, like when my mind is on something else. But I gave this one a really good try, and I found that it wasn't too bad, once I get past all the things that don't mesh well between me and Hoffman's writing. This book centers around a boarding school in New England, a quiet one where the "rich kids" are sent and silently scorned by the townies. When a young boy is found dead in the river, a local detective takes it upon himself to solve the mystery while the rest of the department takes the school's bribe and writes it off as a suicide. The friend of the dead boy, attempts to find her own place in the world, coming to terms with his death, withdrawing from her own boyfriend, and befriending the school's eccentric photography professor and one of the department heads who has a reputation for being mean. Along the way, she is given clues of his presence still with her: wet bus seats and minnows swimming in her pockets. The story is actually quite haunting and well told, blending a little bit of realism and a little bit of supernatural for a good literary effect. What makes it hard for me to read Alice Hoffman's work is that 1) she's overly descriptive. I feel the story should move at a much quicker pace, but it doesn't because she overdescribes things. And 2)she's overly omniscient. I know many readers like having the angle from as many people as possible, and to an extent I do too. But I enjoy books that pause with a break or a chapter before moving to the next person's point of view. Hoffman tends to switch POV in the middle of a paragraph. I find this annoying and it makes it hard to hold my interest. Because I WANT to like her, I'm going to attempt to get through "Turtle Moon." Her books aren't bad at all, and this one showed me that if I can just put myself into the right frame of mind, I can get through it and enjoy the well woven plot.
What do You think about The River King (2001)?
Amazing writing. Examples: (p. 22) "She (Carlin) had swamp dust on her feet and nicotine stains on her fingers, and came from a universe of hash and eggs and broken promises, a place where a women quickly learned that there was no point in crying over spilled milk or bruises left by some man who claimed to love a little too hard or too much." (p. 128): "Indian summer cme to Haddan in the middle of the night when no one was watching, when people were safely asleep in their beds. Before dawn mist rose in the meadows as the soft, languid air drifted over fields and riverbanks."
—Marianne V
I just finished reading this book and didn't like it that much. I have read quite a few Alice Hoffman books, and this is one of my least favorite. I didn't like the statements that she was making about boarding schools or the parallel made between money and lack of intelligence. I could be reading too much into it, but all the even mildly interesting characters in the book had the same characteristics: they were all smart, poor, and critical of wealth and wealthy people in the same normative way. Every the other character was exactly the same: rich, dumb, ignorant, and snobby. I also thought the book had an unbelievably unsatisfying ending.
—kc
The River King is about two misfits who come to a boarding school in the fictional town of Haddan in Massachusetts where they encounter bullying and tragedy at the hands of the other students. What happens stirs up relations between the town and the school and opens up old wounds. The story is about how to recognize a person worthy of true love and how old secrets can lie submerged to pop up again in the present. An atmospheric, lyrically written story that abounds in magical realism, and presents both the evil and the good in human nature. I found it an engaging read. I also enjoyed the fluid point of view shifts that were never confusing and instead contributed to the idea that the story was about the whole community, rather than one individual. The only reason I gave this four stars instead of five is that I felt somewhat unsatisfied by the ending. I wanted more justice and closure I guess for some of the characters. A key decision by one of the main characters, a teacher, whose denial of her own feelings has been a theme in the story, happens off-camera and I would have liked to be there for her decision. I haven't read any of Alice Hoffman's other books, but based on the strength of the writing in this one, I'll seek out others by her.
—Elfscribe
