I really wanted to like this book. I love the Oxfordshire countryside, the 19th Century, the idea of stories and old codgers sitting around a fire to tell them. I don't have a connection to the Thames but I love geography and there's nothing I love more than describing the youth, middle age and old age of a river. So what went wrong with the book. It just couldn't decide what it wanted to do or be or even be about, was it mystery novel or a mythical novel or a historical romance or a fictional biography. It couldn't help getting a bit of a woke element in it, and it never kept my interest going (I took a year and a half to finish it, yet I did persevere) and it just seemed to be stringing me along creating fake tension and then trying to be literary to make up for the lack of a story. I got bored so often, yet the reviews said it was so good, so I kept going. Imagine my surprise from half an hour ago when I finally finished the book and nothing. Nothing happened! Ben was possibly the most interesting characters but was given a 10d role. Vaughan and his wife could have come and gone and I wouldn't have missed them or barely noticed them. Armstrong was just too goody goody, and Robin too baddy baddy. In the end it seems to me that the whole thing was a vehicle for the photographer, Henry Daunt or Taunt, who seems to have had a very interesting life and didn't need a fictional structure to colour him and give him a stage. I am sorry to say that at least for me the book didn't get my fire going and nor did it get even close to keeping the old codgers awake as they sat drinking their pints. Oh, and yes I forgot to mention The Child. That was on purpose, it wasn't worth mentioning.