lettersfromthelighthouse:Title: Swimming HomeAuthor: Deborah LevyFirst published: 2011Dates read: 31

lettersfromthelighthouse:Title: Swimming HomeAuthor: Deborah LevyFirst published: 2011Dates read: 31. 01. – 09. 02. 2020Category: first time read, library bookRating: 3.5/5The book in five words or less: surreal and haunting My thoughts: Swimming Home starts like your typical holiday mansion murder: with a body in the swimming pool. However, it soon turns out that the body is no body, and the murder victim very much alive. Kitty Finch is a botanist, gorgeous, and slightly mad – and her arrival at the French Riviera shakes up the lives of war correspondent Isabel, her poet husband Joe, their fourteen-year old daughter Nina and friends Mitchell and Laura beyond anyone’s expectations. For such a short novel – novella, really – Swimming Home is chock-full of interlacing, overlapping themes and motives, and it packs quite a heavy punch, too. It is a book about family, friendship, appearances, mental illness, creativity, belonging, and all the hidden things that can not be said. It is also a book that plays with style and structure in a new and creative manner. After reading Deborah Levy’s non-fiction and her novel Hot Milk last year, it came as no surprise to me that Swimming Home is, again, filled with extensive symbolism, acute observations of interpersonal relationships, and vivid scenery. In fact, the novella’s setting in the south of France is one of its strong suits: The oppressive summer heat of the riviera is almost palpable, strikingly drawn and sensual despite the shortness of the book. As for the characters, they are complex, flawed, and, occasionally, contradictory beings that Levy reveals carefully, slowly removing layer upon layer until they lay bare before the reader’s eyes. It is not as if their relationships are entirely conflict-free – that much is clear from the start – but how deep the rifts really go is only slowly revealed over the course of the week the novel spans. To each other – and that is probably the true tragedy of Swimming Home – Levy’s characters remain deeply enigmatic; this much becomes painfully clear way before the end of the novel, and it is one of the main driving forces of the plot.Overall, the novel has an almost surreal quality to it that I found immensely fascinating: Levy repeats phrases and motives and excavates her story like an archaeologist. It is left to the reader to piece together the broken shards. Naturally, the final picture is fractured and incomplete. And while that is generally something I seek out and value in my reading material, somehow Swimming Home didn’t entirely work for me. I sometimes had trouble following what exactly was going on – especially during conversations – and while I appreciate open-endedness and a few remaining mysteries, the relatively large set of characters and the constant shifts of perspective left me with a feeling of haziness that I found a touch unsatisfying. Maybe it’s because the novella is so short, but in the end I did not emotionally connect with Swimming Home in the same way that I did with Levy’s non-fiction and – to a lesser extend – Hot Milk. Which is a shame, really, because on an intellectual level it was definitely a compelling read. Content warnings:  mental illness/depression, suicide Read if you like: Deborah Levy’s other fiction (especially Hot Milk), vivid but slightly oppressive scenery, surrealism, symbolism, the French Riviera -- source link

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