Vaid’s Verdict: After River is the perfect gift for someone flying to Timbuktu – a. because they’ll need some light reading for the 18 hour flight and b. the first few chapters work better than a sleeping pill and a travel pillow combined.

After River is author Donna Milner’s first published novel…and I’m not entirely sure why it was published in the first place. Is it the descriptions of scenic British Columbia that the editor felt could carry the novel? Is it the cast of homely and utterly clichéd characters whose dialogue are all exactly alike? Or is it the very ‘risqué’ message of comparing today’s war in Iraq to the Vietnam War? (Ooh la la!) After River tries very hard to be topical, intriguing and liberal. Unfortunately, it tries a little too hard. The novel revolves around a family, the Wards, who own a dairy farm in rural British Columbia and employ River, a young American and ‘conscientious objector’ of the Vietnam War. River runs, flows and winds through the family’s life in a bittersweet path that forever erodes and gushes through the characters’ lives. Oh the cheesy personifications, the blatant symbolism…and if you think that’s painful, read on to the last lines of the first chapter.

After River is a first person narrative told through the eyes of the family’s daughter Natalie, an awkward tomboyish 13 year old who grows up to be a stereotypical ‘distant’ woman with commitment issues. Milner tries to give the readers a different perspective – an excerpt from River’s journal for instance – but unfortunately all the characters sound quite like Natalie. What’s worse is that Milner doesn’t *show* her readers what’s happening or how the characters are coping. She simply tells us, making the difference between narrator and author barely visible. One saving grace is Milner’s ability to bring the readers to the Ward’s dairy farm in Atwood, BC. The mountains, forests, rivers (sorry I couldn’t help myself) and the general feel of what it would be like to live on a farm is done fairly well. There are even nuggets of prose that don’t reek of clichés. It’s not that After River is a terrible read. Once you get through the first 10 or so chapters where Milner hints (like a sledgehammer) that dark and mysterious things are going to change this quaint cow-loving family’s lives’ forever, it actually becomes fairly readable. But that’s about the best I can say about it. It’s readable. If you have nothing better to read, you’re a housewife without children or friends, and you’re trying to waste the minutes of the day away, After River can even be engrossing.

Here are the last few lines of the first chapter:

He smiled at us from the other side of the fence as the border collie licked his hand. Mom smiled back, smoothed her damp apron and started down the porch steps. I hesitated for only a moment before I put down the laundry basket and followed. We met him at the gate.

She was expecting him.

She wasn’t expecting the heartache that would follow like a cold wind.

(Queue the dramatic music please)

And here’s an excerpt that makes After River readable:

My carefully memorized Act of Contrition, ‘Oh, my God I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest my sins…’ dissolved the moment I knelt in the shadows and heard the rough slide of the wooden slat. With the appearance of the priest’s silhouette behind the screen, I blurted out ‘I didn’t eat my peas!’ and burst into tears.

At six, the concept of sin was too abstract.