The River
by Paul Mason
Leo has travelled from New Zealand to visit his father, who has a houseboat in England. Leo and his dad touch briefly on memories of earlier visits to England, when the family was still together and living in New Zealand. The river has changed since the earlier visit, polluted by a factory upstream. Leo’s desire to see the selkie he saw previously causes him to fall into the dirty river. Leo finds that to save himself, he has to “stop fighting the river”, and students may hypothesise that this realisation could help him deal with the changes in his life.
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