Ann Schlee’s Rhine Journey was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981, the year Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children won. What a shortlist that was! It included Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, Muriel Sparks’ Loitering with Intent, and Molly Keane’s Good Behavior, just to name a few. As always, though, some books on the list get overlooked as the years go on. And for me I mean overlooked literally because I have looked at that 1981 shortlist many times and have even typed up the list several times in the past, but when McNally Editions announced they were releasing this gorgeous edition of Rhine Journey, I genuinely thought I’d never heard of it. Well, I’ve heard of it now, and I loved it. This is a wonderful, deceptively quiet book.

It’s the summer of 1851, and we meet Charlotte Morrison, a woman passing middle age, as she goes on a trip down the Rhine with her brother’s family. We meet Charlotte and her brother, the Reverend Charles Morrison on the first page in an interaction that I’ll quote at length because it really gets things going.

‘The luggage has simply been left on the deck,’ said the Reverend Charles Morrison. ‘I had thought, Charlotte, that you were with it.’

Charlotte, his sister for whose summer excursion (the fact suffused her at this moment) he had generously paid, said, ‘Surely you didn’t ask me.’

‘Was it necessary to ask? I assumed that when you went off by yourself on to the deck it was to check on the luggage, knowing as you did that I was otherwise occupied.’

For he had been distributing tracts for the edification of their fellow passengers. She could not restrain a glance at the black velvet bag slung across his shoulder, nor repress her sensation of relief that it was empty. She said of the luggage, ‘I’m sure it is quite safe.’

‘On the contrary, you have no occasion to be sure of any such thing. We have been warned often enough of thieving on the Rhine and have observed the extreme negligence of the shipowners. I have impressed upon you before, Charlotte, the possibility that the captain may actually be in league with the thieves. It is our duty to be vigilant at all times over the property of others as well as our own.’

She loved him, had always loved him, but knew him to be habitually thus, like a lantern swung deliberately on a pole, searching in this part, then in that, going over the matter second time. Had it not been the luggage it would have been something else. Soon he would mention the Almighty.

Charlotte has learned how to manage her brother, recognizing that he does genuinely care for her, even if his care for her means he claims it as his duty to be “vigilant at all times” over her as well as their property. We very soon recognize just how much his vigilance has gutted Charlotte’s life. As she is tending to the luggage, she believes she sees a man she has not seen in twenty years and it shakes her to the core. Her sister-in-law and her niece Ellie do not notice, of course, that anything has happened to Charlotte, and Charlotte soon calms down as she registers what she knew at once: the man on the deck is not the man she once hoped to marry, the man her brother stopped her from marrying those decades before.

Schlee’s writing is crisp and insightful, and the book is structured in a way that we follow Charlotte through her internal turmoil only to later realize she’s likely just sitting quietly while her family frets about, unable to imagine what she’s going through.

Charlotte is able, though, to see what her niece is going through — or so she thinks, and maybe she’s right. Ellie is young and attractive, and Charlotte fears Ellie might also share her fate. Charlotte is particularly worried that Ellie will lose her youthful enthusiasm when the attention of a young officer on the Rhine is deflected. But maybe Charlotte is overthinking this (and I love how Schlee gives us a glimpse into Ellie’s rise from the innocence of childhood):

Charlotte’s fear for her niece, if fear it had been, proved unfounded. The young officer did not reappear and Ellie after all did not care. What had he been but a glass in which she had caught an intoxicating glimpse of new powers?

Rhine Journey was released earlier this year by McNally Editions in the US and by Daunt Books in the UK (both with a great introduction by Lauren Groff). I hope this brings it to the attention of many unsuspecting readers, and I strongly recommend that, if you haven’t done so, you pick it up and witness how powerful quiet Charlotte can be. I’ll end with a little bit of a conversation she has later with her brother:

“You are tired,’ he said. ‘You are not yourself.’

‘Who then? Look at me. Who?’