Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_and_nominated_authors_of_the_Booker_Prize in 2012 9 out of 10

 Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_and_nominated_authors_of_the_Booker_Prize in 2012

9 out of 10

 

 

Swimming home has been competing for the Man Booker Prize with the astounding (though I do not remember much, alas, I look at the note written less than two years ago and see that I was exalted) The Lighthouse by Alison Moore http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/trying-to-find-what-is-essence-of.html and the acclaimed winner, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, the latter adapted for television.

 

I preferred The Lighthouse to Bring Up the Bodies http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/01/bring-up-bodies-by-hilary-mantel.html -though the former made much less of a splash, and eventually lost the big prize (on the vote of that jury, for it has mine, perhaps with Hilary Mantel coming second, and then Swimming Home, I have not had the chance to read any of the other three nominees, and since Umbrella is more than four hundred pages long, it is unlikely that it will be taken up any time soon) it has such an outré, captivating main character, that I identify so much with, that it exalted me, Futh has become a lost friend…

At about the time when I have read The Lighthouse, I had the chance to meet with the universe created by Deborah Levy in Hot Milk http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/thinking-about-hot-milk-by-deborah-levy.html where what happens (or just the series of nonevents) takes place in Spain, where the protagonists go to get the services of a clinic, somewhere near the sea, in an attractive setting (however much I prefer Greece, where I had hoped of settling, in Santorini preferably, at a time when such an ideal retirement could be contemplated [not anymore], Spain would do, if given a good chance, with optimal setting, amenities and the ability to take the two macaws…or wait, maybe just Puccini, let me think about it nonetheless) where the mother and daughter drink Hot Milk, or they do not, I cannot possibly remember, which is such a drag and annoyance, it tends to happen even with admired chefs d’oeuvre…

 

Swimming Home has quite a few bizarre characters if we must not say that all the cast is bonkers, balmy, we enter abruptly into the plot, however unclear it is for yours truly if this first chapter, two pages long, anticipates some of what happens, it is inserted not as the ending, but something that happens in the middle of the narrative, then we move to the next part, and find Kitty Finch in the foggy pool (the alleged caretaker, Jürgen, has not used the proper chemical formula) immersed naked…

She will be walking, standing in the nude for a disturbing amount of time (it makes this reader lose focus, if not becoming horny, as he would have, some decades back, still, it feels somehow inadequate, the young woman becomes ever more estranged, remote) and she does show some other signs of Hideous Kinky http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/hideous-kinky-by-esther-freud-10-out-of.html mental illness - she will take a knife near the throat of the neighboring doctor, Madeleine Sheridan

 

Kitty Finch talks about a misunderstanding, she has made the wrong reservation, the villa in Alpes Maritimes, South of France, is in fact due to receive Jozef Nowogrodzki aka Joe Jacobs (also called JHJ, or arsehole poet, the latter used by his ‘friend’ Mitchell) his wife, the war correspondent Isabel Jacobs, their daughter, fourteen years old Nina, their friend, Mitchell, and his very tall wife, Laura, but Isabel invites the stranger to use the guest room, in an attempt to distance herself from her husband, maybe encouraging them to have the affair that we sort of learn about in the introducing two pages…

The narrative of Swimming Home is all more than bizarre, surreal, there are elements that make the personages appear improbable, but then what doe fiction have to do with verosimility, it is the definition of not real, even when the characters of the novel are as Malcolm Bradbury said in To the Hermitage ‘Fiction’s people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its (fiction’s)  actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

Joe Jacobs is a very successful poet, and that in itself looks like an oxymoron, yes, Dan Brown, and even more JK Rowling are hugely successful celebrities that write and have made huge amounts of money out of the trade (such envy should pour out here), but otherwise, scribblers make little, and to my knowledge, even those who have published some successful opus have to write for a journal, teach or do something else to make a living, never mind a poet, who furthermore is affluent in this novel appears as credible.

Only that is not the point, the atmosphere is poetic, it has both the allure of something that has happened – we have fans that stalk the stars, some have tried to assassinate them, and a few managed to kill them – Kitty is not a mistaken traveler, she had come to the villa to meet Joe, give him the poem she wrote (title: Swimming Home) though ‘she was not a poet…she was a poem’, the man and the aspiring artist get close ‘to have been so intimate with Kitty Finch had been a pleasure, a pain, an experiment, but most of all it had been a mistake’ they have sex at the Negresco Hotel – I thought the man had been Romanian, but in this novel, the author says he was Hungarian, it seems inevitable, following the Chekhov Gun rule

 

We have quite a lot to learn about the other personages (impressive, especially given that the book has only about 176 pages) Nina has her first period while at the villa, she is pursued by a local bar owner who looks exactly like Mick Jaeger, Jürgen is in love with Kitty, it might all end up in a tragedy, Kitty may kill somebody, or somebody else could http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world