Books 2014 - Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

[byslantedlight]

As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?

This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2012, and I thought it would make a nice contrast, having read the light fluffy The Longest Holiday, and various YA stories before that. It would surely be well-written, I would feel the characters, and the hills above Nice, and it would be a good think-y read. Profound and thrilling, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves says the blurb, and I do like strange and new things.

Swimming Home really just reminded me though that there's a reason I rarely read books that have been nominated for the big literary awards! They might make us think, but they invariably seem to do so by also making us feel rather grubby and depressed, and reminding us that people are shits to each other, from one end of life to another. So not why I read - you can see and feel all that out there in real life!

I don't read books just to feel good, or only as light entertainment etc., but I think that what I do want from any book, however bleak the subject matter, is some kind of redeeming hope in people and the world, some message, however briefly spotted, that it's all worth going on with. I really couldn't find that message in Swimming Home, for all that there were some vivid lines and thoughts in it that I liked. Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely says Kitty Finch in the story more than once, and so the fact that, while everyone in the story may technically "get home", as witnessed by the really irritating plot device of cutting off the the story at its climax, and then fast-forwarding 15 years or so and letting us know, may technically be true, they don't at all seem to be "safe" even if they've recovered enough to keep plodding on, and that only suggests to me that, by Kitty's words, life really isn't worth living then...

Not quite the feeling I want from my holiday reading challenge!

Key West, USA - The Longest Holiday by Paige Toon
Nice, France - Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Comments

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

Ah, this was a book that caught my eye a while ago (the cover, probably, and the title!) but I never got around to pursuing it. I still might, although there are a number of reviews around that suggest it's not a very 'warm' book. When I did a quick tally in my head I thought that probably I enjoy about 60-70% of the literary prize books I read, but that yes, a feature of the ones I tend not to like would be anything with an icy core, or, however beautifully written, lacking some kind of redeeming hope in people and the world as you say.

I've just read (on holiday!) a Sebastian Faulks which I'm in two minds about. There's a lot of the awfulness of people in it, but I think there's a redemptive message there. Thank you for this post - it will make me ponder that very good question for when I do my next book post!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so sending you this book! Save me taking it to Oxfam... 📓Interesting that I wasn't the only one who didn't find it warm read (what a good way of describing it) Don't think I'll be trying the new Faulks either from what you've said though... Actually I've not been mad on the couple of his books I've read either - but I'm sure I have read literary prize books I've liked a lot... I'm sure I have... (Sorry, I keep being distracted by Buzzcocks as I type this and it barely makes sense any more...)

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

Thanks again for sending me this - I just read it this morning. And although there were times during it that I felt a bit impatient and thought I was only going to read on because it was so short, actually I ended up thinking it was rather good. Hee, I did keep reading 'Kitty Fisher' instead of 'Kitty Finch', and was a little irritated with the rather kooky way of her, but the whole thing was rather wonderfully dreamy I thought, in terms of language and the overall effect. It sort of mesmerised me. And as long as it's done well (which, subjectively, I thought it was) I can be a sucker for sex/death metaphors and all that :) Already I'm flashing back to parts and want to read them again! I do agree that the device at the end with the fast forwarding wasn't great although I did like the "life must always win us back" line in relation to dreams - and didn't feel it was a 'life isn't worth living' book at all, but more 'life is so very fragile'.

Anyhow, I'm glad to have read it, so yay to book posts! (And, actually, to all of us liking different things!)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Rats - I only replied in my head again, didn't I...

I'm really glad you liked it, because I wanted to, and to feel mesmerised by the writing and all, but it just didn't work for me... As you say - yeay to us all liking different things! *vbg*