This book is so well written and was so beautiful.
However the last portion of the book was utterly confusing and I didn’t like it at all.

This book has something I don't think I can put into words. I was excited to see Costello had a new book out having read and adored "The Mare" a couple of years ago. The River Capture doesn't disappoint but it is a challenge. I wish I'd read Ulysses though as it would have helped me get more from the story and the ideas. Thank you for approving this title for me. 3.5

Luke O'Brien has left the hustle of busy Dublin in order to return to his childhood rural home.

This was a book that I really struggled with. I found it slow and really quite uninteresting. Luke seems to have returned to rural Ireland in order to sit around and think and do very little else. His thoughts have specks of interesting facts - mainly about the past and the strange death of his aunt when she was young. Other than that there was very little of interest.
I got around three quarters of the way through this book before giving up in despair. It had been very slow and quite boring but when there started to be lists of the contents of the rooms in Luke's house I just gave up. I just couldn't see the point of it.
Yes, the writing was good in the sense of being well constructed and using a good vocabulary. However, there is little story to be found.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.
This book was very prose focused with the majority of the book given over to the MC's inner monologue. I found it interesting at times but sometimes ti was crude and offensive, which was disappointing.

This is beautifully written but it's very slow going. I struggled to connect with it and it felt a bit too much of a chore for a pleasure read.

Some books just leave me sitting there, open mouthed, wondering what it must be like to have a mind like the authors’ and this is definitely one of those - it is just so beautifully crafted and insightful, and asks so many BIG questions about everything from mental health, sexuality, mortality and love. The reality is I’m not sure I’m quite up to reviewing this from an intellectual level!

All I will say is that this is for any fan of James Joyce’s or anyone who prefers their reading at a slightly higher intellectual level - or just anybody who loves beautifully lyrical writing that paints a picture with words.

This was a very unexpected read, received as an advanced copy from NetGalley.

I won’t go into detail on the ins and outs of how it is written as it has been discussed many times before, I will focus on my reaction to the narrative.

The first half felt like a slow, somewhat aloof introduction to a typical chick lit novel. Sad lonely man meets cute girl... cue awkward dates and discussions and an opinion from an elderly relative... the narrative was a little self indulgent but it was readable enough. The second half, following in the footsteps of its inspirer, divulges into a question and answer session from the sad lonely man’s perspective. It’s dry and frustratingly long, however the author perceptively relays the thought torrent of mental illness. It is truly exhausting and in this way she excels in getting the point across. The sudden turn in narrative at the end draws the scenario perfectly to its conclusion and the subsequent feeling the reader gets is spot on in her attempts to make the reader feel the stages of mental illness.

Consequently I would recommend this book to everyone. Not for a relaxed, pleasurable, joyful read, but for a very eloquent insight into the lives of people with mental illness. The consequences of reading this could be life changing or life affirming and for that I can only applaud the author.

I don't think I'd understood how much of a homage to James Joyce this book would be, so having no great knowledge or experience of his writing, I did labour with this at times.

That being said, the underlying story of Luke and his quiet reflections on life was enjoyable enough - I would just have got a lot more out of it if I'd been a Joyce fan.

Mary Costello's short if dense novella, thoroughly drenched in James Joyce, Ulysses, and Leopold Bloom and littered with other literary references, is exquisitely written and original, but it left me admiring it, rather than loving it. 34 year old Luke O'Brien, a Dublin teacher, has been taking a sabbatical, returning home to Waterford and his family home, Ardboe House, amidst the farming community, taking care of his dying Aunt Josie, and failing in his plan to write his own work on Joyce, who he is positively obsessive about. Now living by himself, he wanders the glorious landscape, close the Sullane river, considering the darkness prevalent in the locale, its history, burdened by the tragedies of his family's past and his life, and his sexual fluidity.

His life begins to take a turn for the better when he meets Ruth Mulvey when she turns up on his doorstep with a dog, he is very honest about his sexuality. However, he is derailed when his 81 year old Aunt Ellen imparts family secrets that neither he nor Ruth were aware of. Ellen insists that he choose family, and Luke begins to slip into depression and madness, under mental and emotional pressures, as he ruminates over what he should do, the structure of which clearly once again echoes and replicates Ulysses and, Luke seeing himself, like the geography of the river, being overridden by more powerful forces.

With its ambiguous and disturbing ending, I found myself only intermittently interested in what is an ambitious and accomplished novel. However, I can see it appealing to others more, particularly those who love their Joyce. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC.
Luke is living in the old family home, renting out the farmland, ostensibly on a career break from his Dublin teaching job to write about James Joyce and his work. He’s close to his aunt, has an oft-pregnant cat, spends a lot of time thinking rather than doing. Slowly, we learn a little more about his circumstances and a lot more about his thoughts on Joyce and Bloom and a vanished world, all increasingly interconnected in his mind.
He acquires a dog and meets a woman. He hears another family secret which may change the course of his life or might not. All of this is merely background to the rhythms of his thoughts and the minutia of his days.
Once I stopped hoping something would happen to wake Luke up, and let the language flow over me like the river in the title, I enjoyed the audacity and intelligence of the writing. I’m no Joyce scholar and am sure others would understand it better than I did, but I just kept swimming and felt I’d accomplished something by the end.

Even after so long reading and reviewing I still feel randomly guilty when for whatever reason I don't connect with the work of an obviously talented writer. Such was the case with The River Capture, a beautifully written novel that, well, bored me.

It's probably helpful to point out that I have the same problem with Donnna Tartt so if you like those you'll probably love this. It is the kind of literary story where an awful lot of nothing happens before something happens...and whilst I'm not adverse to a slow burner, have in fact loved a fair few that others have considered too slow, it is highly subjective but this wasnt for me.

Joyce fans will devour it. But my interest in a man wandering around looking at cows before starting a very very slow descent into some kind of madness lasted only about 25% into this...when he was still doing an awful lot of nothing. So there it is. Admittedly I skim read the rest but in the end I simply didn't like it.

Yes still feeling randomly guilty.

Finished this book but struggled through it. Started off well but then went off on a different tangent and I lost the enjoyment of reading it,