3 ideas
The novel holds that forgiveness is not a verdict that the act was pardonable or a return to what came before. It is a slow, bodily reopening that happens while the wrong remains fully remembered. Reconciliation is shown as a new relationship built beside the wound, not a restoration that closes it.
Dalva's response to the unbearable harm is not to leave or accuse but to stay and withdraw: silence, sexual refusal and emotional absence inside a shared home. Being near the person who will not look at you becomes a sentence the guilty party serves daily. That keeps both people bound to the event rather than free of it.
Through Lucy, whose sexual power and longing are portrayed without moral judgment, the book separates desire from love, shame and guilt. A character can want intensely while grieving, or be loved while undeserving. Reading the characters this way shows each of them being carried by forces that do not wait for moral resolution, like the river of the title.