"Swan River" by David Reynolds. [review - radio script]

Abstract

"Swan River" by David Reynolds is a family memoir covering four generations of the Reynolds family, a story of the love and cruelty, childhood memories and adult failings, to be found in any family’s history over the span of a century or so. The Swan River of the title is not the river in Western Australia but a town in Manitoba, Canada, a place notably deficient in both swans and rivers. The narrative of his forbears is interwoven with the story of David’s childhood and youth, ending with the death of his father in 1969. His friendships and youthful infatuations, dabblings in political radicalism and mind-altering drugs, encounters with flower-power and psychedelic art, are all carefully chronicled.