Belinda Castles' second novel, The River Baptists, is a fluid and engrossing novel of interlocking stories and overlapping lives.
It tells the story of Rose, accidentally pregnant to her sister's boyfriend. Feeling alone in the world, and dreading her sister finding out about the pregnancy, she flees to a remote river-side house owned by her sister's boyfriend.
Rose has trouble fitting in with the close-knit and sometimes exclusive community, and her various romantic entanglements (and the trouble this often gets her into) all make for an engaging and interesting story.
Rose is a vulnerable and, at times forlorn person. Isolated from her family, and excluded by many of the townspeople, she seeks comfort and companionship in all the wrong places.
Many of her troubles are of her own making, and so it is tempting to not empathise with her. And yet, she is a strangely alluring character, making you feel sorry for her. Her story highlights the themes of loss and loneliness that underscore much of the novel.
The novel is peppered with crusty characters whose language use is at best limited and at worse downright crude. While this serves to illustrate their characters and build a picture of life on the river, it is almost always confronting and at times unnecessary.
The sexual references and exploits, while again helping to underline the themes of loneliness and desperation, seem at times to be gratuitous. Loneliness can surely be evoked without resorting to descriptions of Rose's sexual dalliances.
The themes of secrecy and inability to escape the past are shown through the stories of some of the rougher townspeople. These are diverting and help take the focus off Rose and her seemingly endless problems.
One positive does emerge from the depiction of Rose's sad and complicated life. While undesirable, it does serve to highlight the emptiness of a life without Christ, and the lengths people will resort to in order to try and fill their empty lives.
This book is an engrossing and easy read, making it perfect (in this sense) for the Christmas holidays. However, Christians might be wary of the frequent coarse language and sexual references.
