Slow River
by Nicola Griffith
What kept me engaged at the beginning of Slow River was all the detail about waste-water treatment methods! Yes, I am a huge nerd. It was only more towards the end that Lore's three selves---childhood, her time with Spanner, and the time after Spanner---really started to come together so that I wasn't frustrated to be left hanging at the end of each (short) section, and started to fall for Lore herself. The way everything comes together at the end---"like the confluence of three rivers"---is just wonderful.
Tense switching usually irritates me, but in Slow River I almost didn't notice and it actually succeeded in helping the mental transition between sections of the story. If you're a writer, this is the book to study.
Please note that this book is pretty much all about abuse. There is hinted (and eventually, dealt with head-on) child sexual abuse, rape/"date" rape/all kinds of messed up consent, an abusive partner, forced sex work, suicide and attempted suicide, etc.... I'm sure I'm forgetting things. Not a very happy book. But it has an optimistic ending, which is important to me.
This was interesting to read right after I finished Trouble and Her Friends, another queer sci fi novel. In Trouble, the criminals are lovable scamps; in Slow River, living outside the law has serious consequences even when no one gets caught. Spanner's image of herself as a quirky, essentially good Robin Hood who lives by her wits has many cracks and flaws.
The other similarity between the two books, of course, is that Lore is a lesbian, and so are many of the major and minor characters, and that's NOT one of the traumas---there is no homophobia at all. (There also isn't any visible racism, though there is an intense ableist scene.) On the other hand, in Trouble and Her Friends, homophobia and racism and sexism haven't truly changed, they've just adapted to new contexts with new twists. I thought a lot about the contrasts between these two visions of institutional discrimination, and while Trouble's is probably more realistic, Slow River's is still an interesting change of pace. It certainly makes you think.