Details Of Books Swimming Home
| Title | : | Swimming Home |
| Author | : | Deborah Levy |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 165 pages |
| Published | : | October 6th 2011 by And Other Stories |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literary Fiction. Contemporary. Novels |
Deborah Levy
Paperback | Pages: 165 pages Rating: 3.32 | 9467 Users | 1201 Reviews
Narration During Books Swimming Home
I’m really at a loss to understand why this novella shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 did not win it. This is a perfect book. The prose is magnificent and a tour de force by an author with an exquisite handling particularly of the mental state in human beings. The setting is July 1994, in a villa up in the hills from Nice in the Alpes-Maritime, one of my favourite places in southern France. A famous poet, Jozef Jacobs, known as Joe, and his wife Isabel, a former war correspondent, are on holiday with their teenage daughter Nina. Other household guests are Laura and Mitchell, who own a shop in Euston, London. Isabel has known Laura for many years but they are certainly not close friends, if anything they are used to one another, and are comfortable together. A mix-up in the letting of the villa sees the arrival of Kitty Finch, who is friendly with the Austrian caretaker Jurgen. He was rather taken with Kitty and called her Kitty Ket whilst thinking of any conceivable manoeuvre to get closer to her in more ways than one. Isabel, decides that the villa is more than large enough for them and Kitty is invited to stay by her. The reason for this is apparent later on. Pubescent Nina has become interested in Claude, a friend of Jurgen, who owns the only café in the village and looks like Mick Jagger. Not a very exciting story you may think but think again. Slowly, the problems in Joe’s and Isabel’s marriage and its fragility become apparent, the worries that Nina has, the eighty year old retired Doctor Madeleine Sheridan who views from the balcony next door the development of the family’s encounter with Kitty and who knows the latter’s extraordinary background, and Mitchell and Laura. Talk about bated breath with every single page I read, this book sizzled with secrets, sensuality, depression, depravity, deception, fear, insecurity and I cannot list all the other factors that came into the equation. Every single comment, be it regarding an insect or whatever, is enhanced. The descriptions are vivid. What to any individual would appear as trivia become of vital importance. Every utterance is an impact on life. The theme centres around water and especially the swimming pool and the fact that Kitty had written a poem that she wished Joe to read. Kitty is a botanist and she is following a specific agenda in life. It was rather disturbing to find out what it was. The poem of Sir Walter Scott springs to mind: “Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"… The intensity of the writing and the attention to detail, never mind the style, are absolutely breathtaking. The novella surges relentlessly towards its rather unexpected conclusion. The ending was not at all what I had envisaged. Spectacular – that’s the only word I can possibly use.List Books To Swimming Home
| Original Title: | Swimming Home |
| ISBN: | 1908276029 (ISBN13: 9781908276025) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | France Côte d'Azur(France) |
| Literary Awards: | Booker Prize Nominee (2012), Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize Nominee (2013) |
Rating Of Books Swimming Home
Ratings: 3.32 From 9467 Users | 1201 ReviewsCrit Of Books Swimming Home
The antiquarian bookstore I most often frequent has two sections: "Fiction and Literature," where you'd find Michael Ondaatje and Grace Paley and Lorrie Moore, and "General Fiction," where you'd find Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult and Candace Bushnell. I found Swimming Home in the latter section. Don't blame the staff. Blame the covers of the most recent editions, with their benevolent blues and suburban lawn greens. Blame the title (which serves in the novel as the title of a poem-cum-suicideThe individual sentences, the laters peeling slowly were the aspects I liked in this book. But, specifically it's not a style I enjoy reading. So, it's safe to say it just wasn't for me.
How to begin talking about this novel?I am reminded, seeing how much attention this book didn't get (though it was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize), and how unenthusiastic the response by GR reviewers, that I shouldn't trust GR star ratings or at least I shouldn't be following them like breadcrumbs that will necessarily lead me to a compelling book. Of course, I know this, but I must often be reminded. It is so easy to dismiss something "unpopular" (not sure if that is the best word) in this
Im really at a loss to understand why this novella shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 did not win it. This is a perfect book. The prose is magnificent and a tour de force by an author with an exquisite handling particularly of the mental state in human beings.The setting is July 1994, in a villa up in the hills from Nice in the Alpes-Maritime, one of my favourite places in southern France. A famous poet, Jozef Jacobs, known as Joe, and his wife Isabel, a former war correspondent, are on
"she had seen Kitty arrange the tails of three rabbits Mitchell had shot in the orchard in a vase - as if they were flowers. The thing was, she must have actually cut the tails off the rabbits herself. With a knife. She must have sawed through the rabbits with a carving knife." 99I enjoy Deborah Levy's writing immensely however, I would like to read a longer, more strongly plotted novel. Sensual dreamlike novellas only go so far. I agree with other reviewers - the symbolism is a bit on the nose.
The characters were flat, undifferentiated. They were faceless to me, doing nothing, being nothing, but somehow permeating the book with their unspoken whining. Intensely irritating. They all melted together as an amorphous mass of indecipherable...nothingness. I am so done with this book.
I really wanted to love this book, and I did love Levy's writing, her prose is masterful - conveying character, setting, and insight in small spare beautifully crafted paragraphs. The entire book is quite lean -- a week of time, briefly, surgically told -- and yet there are 9 distinct, well drawn characters, each with backstory, plot and motivation. Levy's craftsmanship is rich.The problem is that the book is cold at the core. The oddly comforting epilogue rings false in a book that so limpidly
0 Comments