Introduction

Evie is going away to school, but she can’t seem to leave her worries behind. Even as her train speeds toward her future at a London art school, Evie imagines her father drinking alone in their tiny cottage in Cornwall. But soon Evie is swept up in the colors of London: the streets, the traffic, the people, and especially the Thames River, which she decides she must paint.

Evie’s friends at art school face challenges of their own. Rob, a painter with a primitive imagination, is about to become a young mother. Bianca, a bubbly Italian student, struggles with health problems. Cecile, a former ballerina, faces biting criticism of her flowery paintings. And Evie finds herself falling for Zeb, an older student who makes space-age sculptures out of metal and light.

Evie’s education comes to a halt when she finds her father passed out on her doorstep. She struggles to help her father stay sober, but he disappears into the London streets, never to return. As Evie mourns her father and faces the forgotten history of her mother’s life and death, she must learn how to incorporate loss into her life—and into her art.

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Excerpt

1

I just wanted him to turn round and wave as the train went out, instead of walking up the platform with that gloomy stooped back. Turn round and wave and say, ‘It’s all right, you can leave, I’m all right.’

But he didn’t, because he’s not.

And when I walked along the moving carriage to look out the open window, the train threw me around against the knobs, like it was angry.

He didn’t turn round, so part of me went with him up the platform. Went with him up to the house, where he’d be bound to get the bottle out, doesn’t matter it’s before breakfast.

That’s why he didn’t turn round. So part of me would go back with him, up to the house, into the kitchen.

And I saw St Michael’s Mount slip away behind the hedges, with the sun glinting on the sea.

‘Let me go!’ I shouted at the sea, and then at the hedges, and into the marshes at Marazion.

And all the way through Cornwall past Redruth and Cambourne and Bodmin Moor and St Austell I could feel the pull of my father left alone.

I was halfway into Devon before it happened.

It was because of those tunnels cut in the red rock; you plunge into them after the miles of sealight, and the tentacles couldn’t hold on. They had to let go, and then the city of London began to hum like a magnet, pulling me towards it.

It was telling me my future with promising feelings.

I arrived, and London splashed me all over. A big wave. Lots of experiences all at the same time, colours and loud noises. Women in patterned headscarves asking for money, and men in dark jackets calling out words, and many signs pointing you along bridges and upstairs and down walkways, and old ladies looking bewildered and men in uniform having an argument, and blaring traffic noise and electric skies shining dark and light at the same time and lights changing colours, and so many faces.

And after a lonely night in the hall of residence, at the end of a long grey corridor lit with striplighting that flickered and made the air tremble, and the strange dislocated not-here feeling in that little room that smelt of gravy, I walked out into the autumn morning and smelt a bonfire behind the exhaust fumes. I only had to cross the road to walk into the tall glass cube that would be my art school for the next three years.

I’ve brought my canvas bag with my brushes wrapped up in a tea towel, sticks of charcoal wrapped in tissue paper, a bottle of linseed oil and twenty-two tubes of paint, as though I am going to start painting straight away. But the girl who consults a list, and tells me we have been specifically told not to bring materials on Induction Day, sends me up in the lift to the third floor.

I find my way along the corridor to my name on a piece of paper taped to the wall, and put my bag down next to an easel. I am gazing at my white space.

‘Who are you? I am Bianca,’ says an Italian voice.

I turn round.

‘Hello, I’m Eve.’

Bianca has also brought a canvas bag full of materials, gold paper and different coloured glass pots, which she begins to unpack.

‘They have forgotten the TRO! In-TRO-duction,’ she says. Her voice has a bell in it, a ting-a-ling sound. She is unusually thin, but she has a glitter about her.

‘It’s because they’re inducing us, like babies being induced into the world of the art school,’ says a voice from the corridor.

Bianca laughs.

‘I’m Roberta,’ she says, coming into the studio and

putting her basket on the locker and two plastic bags on

the ground, which both fall over, so paint-spattered tubs

of acrylic roll over the fl oor. ‘But call me Rob.’

She has a round face and dark curly hair.

‘Hello, Rob.’

‘I recognize you from the interview,’ she says to me.

‘Yes!’ I say. ‘What was yours like?’

‘Oh, hellish. One of them was drunk!’

‘I didn’t like the head of painting much.’

‘Oh, the small one who kicks your pictures about?’

‘Yes!’

‘No, me neither.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Near Nottingham, and you?’

‘Cornwall.’

‘I’m from Rome,’ says Bianca.

‘Have you come all the way from Italy?’ says Rob.

‘I am escaping.’

‘What from?’

‘Bad people.’

‘There are bad people here, you know.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know them!’

In the lift we discover that Rob’s boyfriend, Mick, is doing metalwork at Camberwell.

The induction tutor glares at us, tapping her clipboard with her biro, as we join the fi rst-years at the bottom of the stairs.

We are divided up. In our group there is a blonde girl from Ulster, a pretty and delicate-looking girl from Liverpool, slender as a bird, with pale skin. She wears a pair of enormous boots so she looks like a doll. Two girls from Manchester who titter together, a girl with long red hair, a Japanese boy and a young man with a black beard but no moustache who says ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that’ all the time.

‘We will begin in Sculpture!’ says the tutor, pointing her biro.

We walk through the doors into the noise of banging and welding and the screech of the circular saw. Sparks are fl ying, there is a smell of metal, sawn wood and plaster. A student in a blue overall is cutting through metal.

‘Fuck this!’ shouts the young bearded man into the noise.

We are shown how to use the lathe, what precautions to take with the welder, where the plaster of paris is kept, and how to use the glue-gunning machine.

We walk away from the screeching sound, past partitioned spaces with drawings taped to the walls and stacks of sketchbooks, into a room that is quiet.

Five people are in a kind of meditation, putting layers of white gauze soaked in plaster of paris on to armatures made of wood and wire. Their hands and fi ngers are white, and I like watching the white fi ngers smoothing the soaked gauze. They stand back patiently while we look at the ghostly forms.

Outside, next to the enormous kilns, are sheds full of bags of clay, huge pieces of stone, tree trunks, prams, bicycles, bits of rusty wrought iron and some old windows.

‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ says Bianca.

We walk through large studios where students stand about in the midst of their work, gathered round kettles, smoking cigarettes, or look up from their absorption as though we are barely visible.

Rob says ‘Hello!’ to a blonde girl, who looks at her blankly and turns away.

We walk into the ground-fl oor studio for enormous canvases, large as the side of houses. ‘Fuck that,’ says the young man, with admiration.

‘Who was she?’ asks Bianca.

‘She goes out with a friend of Mick’s,’ says Rob. ‘She’s

a third-year and, well . . . I’m a first year. That’s Suzanne! Stuck-up cow.’

‘Porca miseria!’ says Bianca. ‘I can’t bear these cool English cucumber types!’

Rob and I both laugh. ‘What? What is funny?’ says Bianca. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. Invisible River opens with Evie boarding a train to London and leaving her father behind. Why does she still “feel the pull of my father left alone,” (3) even as the train speeds away from Cornwall? How does Evie’s arrival in London help break that pull, and how does Cornwall keep a hold on her feelings and imagination?

2. As Evie sees her school for the first time, she thinks, “I only had to cross the road to walk into the tall glass cube that would be my art school for the next three years.” (4) How does the architecture of the art school—its glass, mezzanines, and various studios—influence Evie’s work and her friendships?

3. What are Evie’s first impressions of her new friends at art school: Bianca, Rob, Cecile, and Zeb? How does each of these friendships begin, and how does each evolve as Evie’s family problems catch up with her in London?

4. As Evie studies Rob’s primitive paintings, she realizes that “she knows how to make an unseen world into pictures and I want to know too.” (27) What does Evie admire about Rob’s art? How does Rob’s pregnancy influence her creativity? How does Rob help Evie discover her own methods and subjects?

5. “Zeb says that around every river is an invisible river . . . and the health of the river depends on the health of the invisible river.” (29) What “invisible river” surrounds Evie in London and in Cornwall? How do Evie’s health, happiness, and artistic vision evolve as her life circumstances change? How is Evie able to discover an “invisible reality” through her art? (292)

6. Although Evie’s father is absent throughout most of the novel, he still has a strong presence in Invisible River. What kind of father does he seem to be? What faults and strengths does he possess? What does Evie learn from him?

7. Analyze Evie and Zeb’s relationship through the small gifts they exchange. What objects does Zeb leave for Evie, and how does she reciprocate? What do these gifts say about each of these characters and the feelings between them?

8. Consider the critiques that each student faces of her art. Why are the teachers so disapproving of their students’ work? How does Evie react to Sergei’s criticism? What kind of art does Sergei want to see, and what kind of art does Evie want to make?

9. When Evie finds her father on her doorstep in London, she feels “a horrible combination of disgust and tenderness and anger and panic.” (98) How does Evie sort through these mixed emotions? Is Evie able to forgive herself for kicking her father out? Why or why not?

10. Consider some of the London locations that inspire Evie, including the London Stone, the Museum of London, Hyde Park, the city’s hidden gardens, and the Thames River. What does each of these London sites contribute to Evie’s art? How does the city look and feel to Evie, and how does she translate its energy into paintings?

11. How does Evie finally remember her mother’s death and funeral? What images and feelings can Evie recall from when she was five? How does Magda help Evie through the mourning process when she loses each of her parents?

12. Consider Evie’s trip to Cornwall for her father’s funeral. What is her state of mind during this trip? How does she emerge from this difficult period, and how does her character change afterward?

13. When Evie, Rob, Bianca, and Cecile paint a picture together in the sculpture yard, they end up with “the wildest painting of London you’ve ever seen.” (246) Analyze the multitude of images and techniques that the girls contribute to this group painting. How do their styles and subjects work together? What comes out of their artistic collaboration?

14. Trace Evie’s artistic growth throughout Invisible River. What colors inspire her when she first arrives in London? How does her father’s arrival and disappearance affect her artwork? How does her mourning process color her canvases? Why does Evie feel that “now I’ve found my own way of working” (271) when she discovers the process of monoprinting?

15. Invisible River ends with Evie and Zeb dancing at the degree show party, “and circles of coloured light are exploding behind my eyes, because the world is being born.” (301) What does this newborn world look and feel like to Evie? What new possibilities are coming to light?

Suggested reading
Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal; Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys; Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon; Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty; Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved; Rebecca Hunt, Mr. Chartwell; William Fiennes, The Music Room; Penelope Lively, Family Album; Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep; J. Courtney Sullivan, Commencement; Julia Glass, Three Junes; Sigrid Nunez, The Last of Her Kind.

Helena McEwen grew up in Scotland and studied painting at the Chelsea and Camberwell schools of art in London. She is the author of two highly acclaimed novels, The Big House and Ghost Girl. Invisible River marks her American debut. McEwen lives in Scotland and Egypt.

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