Book review: The Fish Ladder, Katharine Norbury

Katharine Norbury relates her voyage to rediscover her life and purpose. Photo / Robin Farquhar-Thomson

Fish ladders are structures that Britons began building in the 19th century when they started damming and blocking waterways.

They can take a number of forms but all serve the common purpose of enabling anadromous fish (fish that travel upstream from the sea to spawn in fresh water) to bypass a man-made obstacle.

The fish ladder is the central metaphor in British writer Kate Norbury's intensely personal travel memoir, which recounts the number of explorations of rivers she undertook alongside the figurative journey in search of her own source.

Finding herself in a bad space after the stillbirth of her second child, Norbury needed a goal. She drew inspiration from a 19th century Scottish writer whose protagonist followed a river from the chilly North Sea to its frigid source in the Highlands, at a place named "the well at the end of the world". The image resonated and the theme for her summer became following rivers from sea to source.

Doubting she would ever make the same, actual journey that the fictional Peter Monroe made, she began exploring other, more convenient, rivers. One of her very early forays was to the Mersey, where we learn she had once been overwhelmed by the conviction that she had been born very near the spot she was standing on the beach. When she asked at a nearby convent whether it was possible she had been born there, the unsurprised sisters told her that it was quite likely. Indeed, they confirmed that this was her source - her birth and adoption both took place there.

The stories of her apparently random explorations are interwoven with stories of her past and present - the sense of rootlessness and incompletion that have dogged her as an adopted child, the desolation that followed the death of her child, her devotion to Evie, her 9-year-old daughter and (for many of her peregrinations) travelling companion.

She has a deep affinity for the natural world (dutifully documenting the environmental degradation she sees), a broad knowledge of the myth and legends of the British landscape, and a kind of Wicca spirituality flows throughout. Few plants, animals or events are mentioned without being suffused with a whole payload of allusion and association. It's a heady brew.

Much is said beyond what's set down on the page: the reader is aware, for example, of an insinuation behind the casual juxtaposition of the temporary loss of her wedding ring and the arrival of her husband in the company of a female friend, even if it is never elaborated upon.

Coincidence plays a major role in her life. She does indeed stumble on the source that she seeks, and discovers that since childhood she has been drawn to spend time in the place her birth family comes from.

But as to whether there is a resolution to her deep need to connect with the woman who gave her breath ... suffice to say, few rivers run an unbended course and there is a twist or two in this one.

The Fish Ladder
by Katharine Norbury
(Bloomsbury $36.99)

- Canvas