About this title: A young woman in a future society is forced to go underground to forge a new identity. Winner of the 1996 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
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Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1996-08-20
ISBN-13:9780345395375ISBN:0345395379
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1996-08-20
ISBN-13:9780345395375ISBN:0345395379
Description: Good. Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket not necessarily included minimal wear to binding, majority of pages undamaged, minimal to no highlighting/underlining of text, no missing p. read more
Description: Good. 0345391659 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine, New York
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780345395375ISBN:0345395379
Description: Good/Wraps. . Trade paperback, good conditioin, w. lightly rubbed wraps--a few lt scratches. V. ltly bumped corners. Fr. wrap curving v. ltly at fr bottom corner. Smwht tanned p. edges, ltly tanned pp. Cln, tight, unmarked. read more
Edition: F First Edition, Later Printing
Binding: S Trade Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780345395375ISBN:0345395379
Description: Very Good+ 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall read more
"slow river is a character driven science fiction story with some mystery in it too that explores themes of identity, trust, and recovering self from trauma. the protagonist is a woman named lore, and lore is a lesbian. all the characters felt very real to me, intense, complicated, flawed, interesting.
slow river shifts between three different times at once; the present, the past and the more distant past of lores childhood. this interweaving of time made it more interesting to me. its not difficult to follow as griffith shifts between first and third person to help the reader identify when the events are taking place.
griffith balances an intriguing plot (lore is kidnapped, escapes, is found naked and bloody on the street by a dangerous woman with a magnetic personality. they become lovers and engage in dangerous activities. later, lore tries to return to a more legal life style by taking on a new identity and working a low position in a water purification plant (the same business her wealthy family is in). there are family secrets to be figured out as well as sabotage at the water plant, and always the risk of the discovery of lores true identity) with a sensitive and insightful layering of the complex emotional reactions to trauma.
griffiths depictions of how abuse affects identity are gritty and honest. she exposes consuming shame and the way you can lose the ability to value self and the way this can lead a person to behave in dangerous ways. she focuses on the way trauma affects your ability to trust, including yourself, and as well as your ability to discern who is trustworthy.
i like the way slow river so much about figuring out which identity is you, which is the real you when you find that people see you or like specific aspects of yourself and that you are hiding so much and pretending to be who you are not and how sometimes you pretend so much that this person / identity can feel stronger and more real then the one that feels like the true you, or at least you become afraid that is more real. and too the way you can lose self into feelings and experience and wonder what is you what defines you? does what is done to you define you? does who you have sex with define you? if you are used in ugly ways, are you then ugly? are you the part of you that others see. how can you feel yourself to be who you are without being recognised by an(other)?
griffith shows the way secrets and trauma can destroy our entire world, and the way support and understanding and acceptance from someone else can make a big difference in our ability to give these things to ourselves.
i love the way part of the journey that lore is on, is about lore learning to love herself. to become independent, to become confident, to figure out who she thinks she is, and to learn to be in love with herself first, and then to be loved and feel loved for who she really is. another thing i really loved was how her brother told her that to save herself, to protect herself, to discover and recover herself and to survive living in her dangerous home, what she needed to do was to find something, any kind of hobby and get really into it. i think this is really insightful and significant, this finding something to do that is external and getting really involved in it, this doing art, making something learning something, finding something that helps you explore the world in a way that is external to the forces that are attempting to manipulate, control and abuse you.
that this activity/art/craft/ interest helps you open portals to new way to see, interpret to find things on your own, to find and create beauty, to find and create and define a world outside the limited world they are making for you, the one that feels oppressive and consuming and like it is all there is.
i love the way the entire focus on water purification works as a mirror for the issues of and attempts to cleanse and purify the self.
i love the persephone theme, lore goes into the underworld and she feels dead, people think she is dead, and she spends much of the book working to find a way back up to herself and to the world and feeling alive again."
"Nicola Griffith is a very good writer. Anyone who can make a compelling, exciting, thoughtful, and award-winning novel about water purification certainly deserves respect. The other most impressive aspect of this novel is the fact that the narrative is split half-and-half between present and past, with the past written in the third person and the present written in the first person. The author seems to have handled this design effortlessly, despite the fact that it so easily could have ended up as awkward and disjointed."
"I own this book and I've read it several times now. I'm not sure why I like it so much, exactly. It's a novel about waste treatment plants. Well, and survival. And ethics.
I dislike the simplistic ending, that's why I didn't give it 5 stars."
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