Review of Riverkeep

Martin Stewart

(Penguin, £7.99)

It’s something of a mixed blessing to be so hyped by the publishing world with one’s very first publication. The publishers of Scot Martin Stewart’s debut novel for young adults have wasted no time placing him in the company of Neil Gaiman, Patrick Ness, Philip Pullmann and Herman Melville, no less. Quite a lot for any beginner’s shoulders to carry. Which inevitably begs the question, can he do it?

Publicity for the novel tells us that Penguin acquired it based on just 2000 words, and these 2000 words form the first chapter. It’s clear why: Stewart’s opening is both dramatic and touching, as fifteen-year-old Wull, reluctantly destined to succeed his father as the ‘riverkeep’, watches his own father disappear beneath the water when a freakish monster grabs him and takes him below. The writing is both visceral and highly visual. The violence of Wull’s world doesn’t just lie in the horrible deaths suffered by those dead bodies his father fishes out of river, it’s there in the descriptions of the weather, the landscape, Wull’s inner life (“he felt the emptiness of the world like a fist in his gut”).

Wull and his father inhabit a wintry rural world but, Stewart tells us, “the howls of (the city’s) foundries and smithies carried away on the west wind”, so we know that it’s industrial, too. Accents are all mixed together; Wull’s father, Pappa, sounds Scottish, Wull himself more Cockney, and the characters he meets once he sets out on his ‘quest’ also show a similar flexibility. Pappa survives the monster’s grab, but he isn’t himself any more, and Wull decides that the two of them must set out for the mormorach, a terrifying sea monster whose bodily fluids have miraculous healing properties. The death of the mormorach will surely mean the survival of Pappa.

In that sense, Stewart’s debut is quite conventional. The ‘quest’, or journey, is a classic narrative, used all the way from John Bunyan to Rachel Joyce, and is, of course, a staple of children’s fiction as Tolkein, C S Lewis and many others have recognised. The strangeness of the characters themselves and their world is also part of that tradition, beyond simply fantasy. Wull may be living in a kind of dystopian future; he might be living in some indeterminate past. Either way, it doesn’t matter, expect that this time and place are hostile and forever shifting.

On his journey, he meets an assortment of odd folk. Tillinghast is a kind of Frankenstein’s creature who is made up of other human parts, and who has superhuman strength. Mix, a stowaway, is a tiny girl who also has hidden power and a wry sense of humour. Remedie is a fleet-footed witch who has lost her only child and found his wooden replacement buried beneath a tree. Murdagh is the wicked and violent sea captain, reckoned to be the only man capable of killing the mormorach. On the way, men are chasing Tillinghast who has stolen and mandrake and there are bandits and pirates that threaten the small company, as well as other monsters eager to feed on human flesh.

That may all sound grim but Stewart keeps the pace going, packing in as much description as he can manage along the way. It’s a remarkably assured debut in that sense, written by someone utterly confident in the reality of the world he has created and in the appeal of his characters. There are other messages, too, as so many of this band of unlikely friends all require some kind of absolution or healing. It’s also about learning to let go of those we love, and what makes us human. How the power of memory helps us to tell stories, and stories help to heal. How to live, more than simply to survive, as a compassionate human being, in a hostile world is always an important lesson to learn.

Few debuts can live up to the excited hype of an over-invested publisher, perhaps, but Stewart has had a chance here to establish a world that will captivate younger readers for years to come. The end suggests a sequel, possibly many of them. He certainly has the imaginative capacity and the skill to supply them.