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Swimming Home (2011)

by Deborah Levy(Favorite Author)

3.22 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1908276029 (ISBN13: 9781908276025)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

And Other Stories

review 1: Ultimately I found this book to be overly depressing...I could definitely appreciate that parts of it were beautifully written and the premise, that two couples rent a villa in France and decide to take in a stranger who happens to be in the pool upon their arrival, interesting. Yet, for me, everyone was in a bad position, I was uncomfortable with how confused and mentally challenged Kitty Kat, the pool girl, was, and didn't enjoy reading as the other characters continually made poor choices in their lives as well. Boo. Was expecting different I suppose.
review 2: Frankly, I have no idea how my lecturers could hold this up as some sort of psychological masterpiece. The writing style has a few occasional moments of good description, but they're buried under a ... moremountain of pretentious, flowery verbiage and a number of moments that just plain do not make sense. (So they think a naked woman floating in their pool is a bear. 'Kay.) The characters are nearly impossible to warm to - I don't care if they're not sympathetic, but I should at least have some empathy with them. Instead, the book puts us at a distance, never allowing us to know properly. This isn't some sort of brilliant commentary on the "impossibility of knowing" (blah), it's just plain sloppy. Kitty Finch is probably supposed to be some sort of manic pixie dream girl. Well, Levy nailed the "irritating" part of that description perfectly - nothing beautiful or "enigmatic" about her. I've seen reviews on Amazon call this novel "the stereotypical novel I would write as a psychology undergrad" (not an exact quote), but that does a disservice to the writing ability of anyone on my creative writing undergraduate course. If this can get nominated for a Booker Prize, then I weep for the award's future. less

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