'One day love lay down by the river. He slept in a blue patterned shirt and through the afternoon he did not stir but dreamed with the river's song beside him. When he woke he saw me. Love was not the pattern of leaves and the texture of bark, it was not the underbelly of river or the way of fish, though all that was here was part of it. Love was the passing of the sky across a face, it was the arc of conversation, the thought of forever, the yearning to go on and never back, the desire to be something other than I was. This is the story of a river and the making of stories and the nature of love. Some would say that any story of water is always a story of magic, and others would say any story of love was the same. And being a love story it begins with a broken heart.'
The River Wife is a fable both ancient and modern. The river wife - a woman by day and a fish by night - is bound by the river she tends but falls in love with a man. Tender and melancholy, it speaks to desire and love, mothers and daughters, kinship and care, duty and sacrifice, water and wisdom. The River Wife is a magical, grave and beautiful myth - a true original.
'The River Wife holds stories within stories and they are all woven together with a compassionate and unique hand.' Readings
'Few Australians have chosen to write fables that take shape-changing as their central theme. The River Wife tells her story in intimate, seductive prose. A love story must engage readers and persuade them to believe as well. And this one does. The emotions are unfalteringly subtle and persuasive.' The Sydney Morning Herald
'A cool and luscious fable of love...passionate and tantalising, elegiac and profound ... There are echoes of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, Anna Livia Plurabelle from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and even Murray Bail's Eucalyptus. Replete with sensuous, evocative language.' The Canberra Times
'From the first pages of The River Wife, the reader is struck by the beauty of the prose. There is a fluid brook-like quality to the writing. (A celebration of) the beauty of nature and the enduring power of story.' The Age
