“In a small town a tragedy is everyone’s business”

Two men go on a fishing trip with their dead best friend’s teenage son, staying on the very island their best friend died on. Over the course of a weekend each character’s memories surface and details emerge. The more eyes we get to view the events of that fateful night through, the clearer we can see how deeply intertwined the lives of the island’s residents and its visitors have been over decades. 

As the story develops further, it becomes increasingly unclear what is left of reality as we first saw it – the grief felt by all characters clouds not only their judgment and their ties to one another, but also the readers’ sense of reality, inadvertently involving readers in the emotional turmoil set off by the culling of a ray by the three fishermen. 

Selva Almada brings all her characters to life brilliantly, with great narration and vivid dialogue, changing voices with each character – a true necessity for the audio book to come together so seamlessly without characters losing their distinctiveness, as the changing of perspective is not announced to listeners. Returning to each narrator, we slowly are let into their motivations, making this book so special in my eyes. “Not a River” is the most enchanting, human kind of confusion. At times it elicits the sensation of overhearing the same strangers on the street for years and understanding their lives a bit better each time, but knowing that some things are too personal to ask about. So that is what we are left with: beautiful, strange, human confusion and a sense of familiarity and bewilderment, as we realize it is our imagination creating this sense of closeness.  

Thank you to the team at RBMedia for providing me with a review copy of the audio book of “Not a River” (pub. March 11th, 2025). Originally published in Spanish in 2020, the English version of Selva Almada’s third installment of the trilogy of men was published in 2024.