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Book Review – There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

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About the Book

In the ruins of Nineveh, an ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies, hidden in the sand, fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black River Thames. Arthur’s only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book sending him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Ruins.

In Turkey in 2014, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.

In London in 2018, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. Zaleekhah foresees a life drained of all love and meaning, until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.

Format: Hardcover (484 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 8th August 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

This was a book club pick and I’m so grateful to the person who chose it because it has been sitting on my bookshelf ever since I bought a copy at last year’s Henley Literary Festival. I loved it and, with one exception, all the other book club members enjoyed the book as well.

I can’t summarise it better than the first sentence on the inside front cover: ‘This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.’ I usually run a mile at the prospect of any element of magical realism in a book but I found it easy to accept the concept that a single drop of water could manifest itself in different forms, repeatedly changing from liquid to solid to vapour and back again over vast periods of time. ‘Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.’

The drop of water is not the only thing that connects the three characters and their stories. There are myriad others, some very small details – an oak tree, the colour lapis lazuli, mudlarking – that give you moments of pleasure when you spot them. And there are larger themes such as environmental pollution, climate change, migration, and social and economic inequality, that run through all three stories.

Storytelling is a big part of Narin’s story. Her grandmother tells her stories from Yazidi culture as they make the long journey to Iraq. It’s poignant because not only have the Yazidi been reduced in number because of systemic persecution but Narin is losing her hearing so this is her last chance to commit them to memory. Memory is another theme, particularly in relation to immigrants who carry with them stories from their heritage even while adjusting to a new one, making them members of what the author dubs ‘the memory tribe’.

Arthur’s story is the standout part of the book, not just because of the depth of his characterisation but because of the epic journey the author sends him on fuelled by his learning of the ancient city of Nineveh, once the largest city in the world but reduced to a ruin over the centuries. Arthur’s possesses a photographic memory, is able to solve complex mathematical problems in his head and has the ability to interpret patterns. (Today we might classify him as neurodivergent.) His ability to see patterns enables him to decipher the cuneiform tablets displayed in the British Museum, in particular those fragments that record, in incomplete form, the ancient poem the Epic of Gilgamesh. It fuels in him an insatiable desire to travel to the site of Nineveh in the hope of uncovering the lost fragments that tell the story of a great flood, predating that of Noah’s Ark in the Bible. (Arthur is based on George Smith, the first person to translate the Epic of Gilgamesh.)

In Arthur’s story, I loved the way the author conjured up the sights and sounds of Victorian London, the London of Dickens who actually makes a fleeting appearance. ‘Above and around him London wakes up – the scullery maids, the crossing-sweepers, the fish-curers, the dog-killers, the caddy-butchers, the costermongers, the coffin-makers, the rat-catchers, the long-song-sellers . . . Noise escalates, movements multiply; the city gushes forth, like a fountain that never runs dry.’

Perhaps, as some of my fellow book club members felt, the author tries to cram in too many ideas, some of which are not developed, and perhaps Zaleekhah’s story is the least compelling but, for me, the quality of the writing and the wonderful connections between the storylines outweighed any shortcomings. I also love a historical novel that teaches me things I did not know and makes me want to find out more about them. There Are Rivers in the Sky did just that. I very rarely reread books but this one may be the exception.

In three words: Epic, immersive, multi-layered
Try something similar: The Romantic by William Boyd

About the Author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-six languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s last novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize.

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The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet: A Book Club Discussion

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About the Book

In a world he can’t afford, Edward is just about getting by. He spends his days scurrying after his friends, doing everything to prove his value. But not to worry; the attention of his beloved Stanza and the respite he finds in her ancestral home, Kellerby House, provide all the reward he needs.

Until he realises that Stanza is in love with his best friend, Robert, forcing Edward to re-evaluate what those closest to him are actually worth. No price is too high to stop the life he has strived for slipping from his grip. Especially when he won’t be the one paying.

Format: Paperback (384 pages) Publisher: Faber and Faber
Publication date: 27th February 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Crime

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The Discussion

The Kellerby Code was the April pick of the book club run by Waterstones in Reading.

Everyone agreed the book was very funny. As you’d expect from an author who started out as a comedian, there are great one-liners, witty dialogue and acerbic observation. For example, when Edward is introduced to one of Stanza’s schoolfriends, Dinita.

They were told immediately that she was heading up inclusivity, diversity and outreach at Hendepul, a global television firm, and that her employers didn’t at all understand black youth. Dinita had moved to London from Iran, where her father was involved in oil, been educated at public school and now lived in a large house in Notting Hill, but still: ‘These people just do not understand the average immigrant experience.’

There are some very amusing scenes. One I’d pick out is a dinner party hosted by Robert at which, as a parlour game, each guest is handed a folded piece of paper describing a personality trait or conversational tic they must perform. At the end of the evening others must guess what it was. Edward adopts his given persona so enthusiastically it causes alarm to other guests. However, there was a point in the book (involving a horse) where people felt the humour tipped over into absurdity.

Quite a few of us found pretty much all the characters unlikeable. Personally that meant I couldn’t really care what happened to them whilst others absolutely rejoiced in a book with so many unlikeable characters. There were mixed opinions about Edward. Some felt sorry for him. Others (me included) felt his original actions had unintended consequences meaning he increasingly lost control of events. One person, drawing on the comparisons to Patricia Highsmith’s character Ripley, thought Edward was a portrait of a psychopath. And they had a point because events turn increasingly macabre with Edward displaying an unexpected, or perhaps up until now repressed, capacity for violence.

The author is a devotee of P. G. Wodehouse and there are plenty of nods to the Jeeves stories. For example, Edward’s surname is Jevons and he acquires a sort of inner voice he names Plum, which was Wodehouse’s nickname. Edward performs butler-like duties for his friends, Robert and Stanza, such as picking up their dry cleaning, organising birthday presents and preparing meals. Desperate to retain Robert’s friendship, he’s happy to act as ‘fixer’ but the problems he’s asked to tackle for Robert go way beyond anything Jeeves might have had to sort out for Bertie Wooster. And although Bertie may have been hapless at least he was amiably hapless. I felt Robert was completely self-absorbed, sucking up to Edward when he needed something and then ghosting him when it was done, or even denying he’d asked Edward to do it in the first place.

I was surprised, bearing in mind the cover, that Kellerby House doesn’t actually feature much until near the end of the book and that, considering his supposed devotion to the place, Edward’s final act seems rather bizarre. There was a lot of discussion about the ending which I’m not going to detail here but safe to say there are a few ways you could interpret it and the motivations of those involved.

Our discussions often lead to thoughts about similarities to other books. People came up with (obviously) The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith but also The Secret History by Donna Tartt and the film ‘Saltburn’.

Although I was more lukewarm about The Kellerby Code than some other book club members, I still found a lot to enjoy in it. It was definitely a great choice for a book club because it provoked a lot of different views. In fact, the discussion could have gone on for much longer than the allotted hour.

The Kellerby Code is an entertaining mystery/thriller with a generous helping of black comedy. If you’ve seen the film ‘Wicked Little Letters’ (for which the author wrote the screenplay) you’ll have an idea what to expect.

About the Author

Author Jonny Sweet

Jonny Sweet started out winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer in 2009, and in the intervening years, his work as a writer and actor has been varied and exceptional. His first feature was Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley. Alongside writing and acting, he develops and produces TV and film through his award-winning company People Person Pictures. The Kellerby Code is his debut novel. (Photo: Amazon author page)