Review 'Swimming Home is as sharp as a wasp sting ... Witty and poignant, its pages melt away like an unsettling yet familiar dream.' Sunday Times ---------- 'Deborah Levy has made something strange and new ... spiky and unsettling. In this novel, home is elusive, safety is unlikely, and the reader closes the book both satisfied and unnerved.' The Guardian ---------- 'A stealthily devastating book ... Levy manipulates light and shadow with artfulness. She transfixes the reader: we recognize the thing of darkness in us all. This is an intelligent, pulsating literary beast.' The Telegraph ---------- 'Swimming Home is a beautiful, delicate book underpinned by a complexity that only reveals itself slowly to the reader.' Financial Times ---------- 'This amazing novel is a haunting exploration of loss and longing. It has an epic quality.' The Independent ---------- 'A statement on the power of the unsaid. Magisterial ... Themes, phrases and images recur in rhythmic cycles through this fugal novel. Levy's cinematic clarity and momentum convey confusion with remarkable lucidity.' Times Literary Supplement ---------- 'As the reader is drawn beneath the placid surface of her characters' experiences, Levy reveals a more urgent world humming with symbols.' Literary Review ---------- 'Exquisite ... Levy's sense of dramatic form, as she hastens us toward the grim finale, is unerring, and her prose effortlessly summons people and landscapes.' New Yorker ---------- 'Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens ... Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel.' New York Times ---------- 'Elegant ... subtle ... uncanny... The seductive pleasure of Levy's prose stems from its layered brilliance.' Washington Post ---------- 'Here is an excellent story, told with the subtlety and menacing tension of a veteran playwright.' Wall Street Journal About the Author Deborah Levy is an author, playwright and poet. Her fiction includes two Man Booker Prize shortlisted novels, Swimming Home (2011) and Hot Milk (2016), as well as Black Vodka (2013), shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
D**S
Excellent literary fiction
I bought everything I could of Levy's after reading the fantastic 'Hot Milk', which is still my favourite piece of hers. 'Swimming Home' is also excellent - quiet, character-focused, interesting. It remains pacey even when characters are being introspective. There's a strong 'showing not telling' element for most of the book, in a Hemingway style only with more poetical prose. Readable, with depth, though perhaps a touch trite by the end. Recommended.8/10David BrookesAuthor of 'Cycles of Udaipur'
C**L
The pain behind the mask
In true DEBORAH LEVY style, this book is a devastating account of the relationships dividing and binding a commonplace collection of middle class Londoners on holiday in the south of France. Each one is fatally marked by their history, as each in their own way battles to construct a bearable life in a social world that offers little comfort or support beneath its facade of sunshine, beaches and holiday manners.
I**T
Disappointed with my first Deborah Levy.
From the blurb I thought it sounded great, but was a little disappointed with the way the book was written. Quite strange goings-on. Not that easy to follow. Some interesting parts about the relationship between mother and daughter. I have given it to a charity shop - sorry.
L**S
Blue sugar mice and stones with holes in
"Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely,"An unsettling antidote to ubiqitious family holiday stories. Slim, graceful, full of light and shadow.
K**S
Flawed but worth a read
I'm glad I listened to the hype and read this though it left me conflicted. There was much to admire - the writing style was excellent and the story well paced and interesting. It's weakness, however, was in the characterization. Some seemed superfluous and served only to confuse. The main characters of Kitty and Joe, besides not being likeable, were way too implausible. I'm glad I read it but am unlikely to read it again.
D**N
Good novella full of rather unappealing characters
This is a short novel by Deborah Levy, coming in at what appears to be 157 pages, including (hilariously) two page 156s! For such an experienced novelist as Levy, the book is surprisingly formulaic: many of the themes and motifs are very overwrought, and come across like the output of someone who has spent an enormous amount of time in creative writing courses but who hasn't actually experienced too much of life herself (which I know is not the case with Levy - but that's the way the book reads). The characters are people whom this reader found impossible to like, and some are frankly unbelievable (such as Jurgen, the dreaklocked, dope addict caretaker) and perhaps more like caricatures. The plot is quite predictable, and whilst the book overall is readable and well-constructured, I couldn't help thinking that I was pleased it was only 157 (or 158? or 156?) pages long and that I didn't have to experience these dislikeable characters any longer. In summary, "Swimming Home" was a bit too forgettable for a Booker Prize shortlisted novel, I think.
B**R
A good read
I’d not read anything by Deborah Levy before, and enjoyed this book. I liked her writing style, and am looking forward to reading The Man Who Saw Everything now that it’s been released. It’s not all that long, but a really good read.
P**M
A sad story told in a funny way
Strange little book but I liked it.. Fast reading, chaotic, always something about to happen. It is like a play with one scene after another. All characters are complex and interesting in different ways. The main character Kitty, brings out the weakness and contradictions in the others (writer Jozef, wife Isabel, the confused daughter, the looser friends, the old doctor…) it makes them think about themselves... Too much packed in such a short book.
Trustpilot
5 days ago
1 month ago
