The Book Club met on a cool mid fall evening in the elegant, warm and cozy kitchen of Krysia and Christopher Bell. While appetizing fragrances wafted from the oven we enjoyed appetizers and prosecco and caught up with the members whom we had not seen for several weeks and reflected on those who could not be there, wishing them well.
We sat down to a delicious and hearty meal and evocative anecdotes provided by the members and hosts and eventually got down to the business at hand which was to discuss Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. Opinions were radically but amicably divergent.
The Story revolves around the incidental introduction of a very beautiful but zany young naturalist botanist amidst a group of five friends on Holiday in Antibes. The opening pages are intriguing, evocative and promising but in the majority opinion it goes down hill from there. A few readers felt an immediate and strong affinity for the characters and were drawn into the story which follows the 6 main characters, and several ancillary, through several discomforting and eventually tragic days. Some characters were very well drawn psychologically others were mystifying and frustratingly quixotic.
Margaret insightfully remarked on the metaphor of the swimming pool drawing references to watery grave, Ophelia and suspension as represented by a floating body at the beginning and end of the story. The main protagonist was cited as a catalyst for change in otherwise stilted dysfunctional lives. Selene recognized the powerful force of the water imagery and swimming as metaphor for being lost, or at sea as it were.
Apart from the two very strongly positive reviews, over all it was felt that the story just didn’t hang together, that its otherwise described hallucinatory aspect was unjustified. The author tried very hard to create a cohesive story but did not succeed, as Elisabeth felt it was too long to be a good short story but too short and disjointed to have achieved what was needed to make it a good novel.
“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?
A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves”
The next meeting will be held on November 21st, at Kerry’s Barga location, to discuss The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and the following on December 12th when we will discuss Huxley’s Brave New World, as it relates to the 21st C., venue to be announced.
A few recommendations to add to the reading list are:
The Death of Grass by John Christopher
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Several Titles by Gianrico Carofiglio
Thank you very much to everyone who participated.
Kerry Bell – Barga Book Club – Barga Book Club site is here