Meanderings to relish!

The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson       

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I so enjoyed Narrowboat Summer. A very different read. A story to savor. A quiet winner. Three women meet on a tow path just out of London and for two their lives change forever.

A fabulous cast of eccentric characters and two middle aged women. Sally had just walked out on her marriage and Eve had been let go from her job as an engineer.

Walking from different directions along the tow path the women happen to intersect with each other and Anastasia, a hardened canal boat owner who’s worked the canals and locks for years.

Eve and Sally find themselves deciding to help Anastasia out of a problem, crewing on her narrowboat The Number One, learning the locks and the rhythms of the river, before taking it to a boatyard at Chester whilst Anastasia took care of some health needs. This was the start of a journey measured in days not hours, a journey of the soul.

And that's what drew me on! The people, the rhythms, the slow winding down and calming  that takes place as the women undergo their own particular canal change (sea change!)

This read was whimsical, deep, and slow moving like the canals, and I flowed along with it as the women learned more about themselves, as they interacted with each other, (they are total opposites) and with the very different people they encounter. All the while Anastasia is the anchor, the pivot point around whom they all flow and eddy.

This just might become one of my favorite reads of 2021 as it invoked calm into the happenstances Eve and Sally are challenged by. A certain mindfulness is at play. 

I loved the talented Trompette and the mysterious Arthur. 

I felt liked I'd stepped back in time. I hadn't! I'd stepped away from the rat race. Even the lyrical cover reflects a different world. One could conceive that all the characters are lost and adrift but that's far from the truth. Their truths are so much more at once complex and yet sanely simple. Beautifully paced!

A Flatiron ARC via NetGalley