Rate this book

A Taste Of Chlorine (2011)

by Bastien Vivès(Favorite Author)

3.63 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0224090968 (ISBN13: 9780224090964)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Jonathan Cape

review 1: The first time I read this book too fast. Probably because there is so little text in this comic. The story, I gathered, ran as follows. Some guy, bothered by his scoliosis, starts going to the swimming pool every Wednesday, and meets a girl there. In the end, he likes both the girl (even though she does not come to the pool anymore) and swimming in general. However, as I gathered after a second reading, the point of this book is not so much the story but the how and the where of its presentation.Let’s start with the drawing style. The panels are sketchy and very reminiscent of a movie storyboard. I think you should read them as such, imagining the filmic scene they depict, to fully appreciate how well they convey the strange, dreamy world of the swimming pool. Pay atten... moretion to the aquamarine and turquoise colouring, hear the sounds accompanying the action, allow the drawings to be suggestive and evocative. Dream away at page 50, where you see only the roof of the pool. Second, there is the swimming pool itself. A place of discomfort, sometimes even disgust. But also a place where you reveal yourself, where you expect, yearn, learn and transform, where things become fluid. Most importantly, the pool is a place to go beneath the surface, where passion buds and where you touch something you do not want to give up. Then, you suddenly realise that you’ve found what you were looking for.In one word, this comic is about atmosphere. And once you've let it soak into you, the ending of the book is not as puzzling as many believe it to be.
review 2: So this book turned up on the circulation desk and i decided to give it a look over.Obviously i read the english version. It was a slow book and nothing seemed to happen so I was pleasantly surprised when there was story progression. Then the ending was a bit of a "dafuq did i just read?", I had to look at the ending a few times before I got the symbolism of the sequence and the conclusion chapter was very ambiguous. It is quite obvious that this person is an artist not a writer. less

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