I bought this on the strength of English Passengers, one of my books of the year for last year. It was written ten years ago, before Kneale got famous by winning the Whitbread Prize last year. This book won a prize too -- the John Llewellyn Rhys prize -- but Kneale hadn't yet developed the dazzling range he shows in English Passengers.

Sweet Thames is set in London, in 1849 -- the summer of one of the great cholera epidemics. The story is narrated by young engineer Joshua Jeavons, obsessed by his grand plan to improve London's sewers, and recently married to a strangely cool and distant young wife. When Isabella mysteriously disappears, Joshua sets out to look for her and is drawn into a world of slum-dwellers, pickpockets, prostitutes, scavengers of the sewers, and other dubious characters.

Kneale was inspired by the writings of Henry Mayhew (London Labour and the London Poor) and paints a gruesome and convincing picture of the filth and squalor of early Victorian London -- most Dickensian. The plot takes some interesting twists and turns as Joshua slips further into the mire (literally at times) and gradually grasps that the world is not at all that it seems. In the process he has to challenge some long-held assumptions -- parallel to the search for Isabella is the attempt to understand the causes of cholera (long thought to be carried via a "miasma" in the air, when in fact it was waterborne and spread by those very same noxious sewers). There's an unexpected ending too.

I enjoyed it, but would probably have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read the vastly superior English Passengers first -- it suffered in comparison. Joshua's style is rather pedestrian, which is quite in character, but less dazzling than the multiple voices in English Passengers. Kneale uses the same device of "flashforwards" (with interludes where Joshua is looking back at the events), gradually piecing the story together as more is revealed, but the plot here is considerably more straightforward, and lacking the fierce black humour of English Passengers.

A book centred around drainage systems in London.
This was such a hard read it took my much longer than normal to finish and I very nearly gave up on several occasions.
The end seemed rushed, the “mystery” underwhelming and poorly explained.
Wouldn’t recommend.

A book that is interchangeably about, building a new sewerage system, a cholera outbreak and a missing wife. It should not work but it does. The key is the gritty real depiction of London in 1849. Unusually it is not from the perspective of the Ton, but from a working Engineer who moves between the worlds of the working, middle and some upper classes. It reminded me of Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year. With a mix of fiction and fact and discussions of what London was really like and the huge hygiene and disease issues. So while interesting, the real interest was in the last chapter and the rest of the book lacked a gripping plot of the last chapter. Others saw dark humour and descent into madness of the main character. I just saw someone confused and frustrated, with desperation only truly noticeable in the last 20 pages. I think if more of the book was similar to the last few pages I would have enjoyed this more. But it is easy and quick to get through considering the subject matter and time period it is based in. So it you enjoy a slow build and real interest in the 1849 London I think you will enjoy this. If you are more interested in the mystery probably not.

I fought my way through it at last

Interesting tale based on the attempts to find the cause of the outbreak of cholera in the mid 19th century London.

Like most readers, I suspect, I came to this earlier book of Kneale's after having loved English Passengers. While it has some of the same flair for capturing period detail and elements of the same sly humor, the plotting isn't as assured or successful. Set in London before and during the cholera epidemic of 1849, the narrator is a young newly wed civil engineer. Employed by his father-in-law, he plods away drafting rail lines and warehouses, while in his spare hours he embarks on a grand plan to solve the city's sewage problems. Meanwhile, at home, his marriage is suffocated by his beautiful wife's recoiling from all physical contact, including the consummation of their marriage. The first half of the book sets the stage for all this, climaxing in an important dinner party upon which his fortunes rest, and after which his wife disappears.

The second half of the book is a mystery of sorts, as he roams the streets of London seeking clues to his wife's whereabouts. As he descends further and further into the city's slums, the cholera epidemic takes hold and the abatement of that threat becomes a second mystery to solve. Unfortunately, the two storylines lie quite uneasily and separately next to each other, and the ultimate resolution of the wife's disappearance is rather clunky and fails to convince.

All that said, readers with a taste for historical fiction of the early Victorian era and for fiction about London will find aspects to enjoy here. The author drew heavily on Henry Mayhew's four-volume work of journalism/anthropology "London Labour and the London Poor" to help the story come alive. It might also be fun to read this in conjunction with David Copperfield, which was being serialized at the time this book takes place. Another good companion is Clare Clarke's 2005 novel The Great Stink, which is set about six years later and features another civil engineer working on London's sewage problems.