Omg......... this book was amazing I flew threw the pages with Olympic speed I was hooked from the very first page. I found it full of twists and turns threw out and it kept me on the edge of my seat all the way threw  I would defiantly recommend this book if you like a good book to keep you reading threw the night hopefully you enjoy it as much as I did

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Unfortunately, I read this book back in 2017 but completely forgot to upload a review on here, so can't remember exactly what I was going to say about it!

The Good
* The writing it well executed. I thought Fuller's prose was atmospheric and her world building very good.
* The first third of the book captured my attention and I really enjoyed it.

The Not So Bad
* It lost it's way after that first third and I begun to get bored and a little frustrated with it.
* Just not enough happened to hold my interest.
* The characters were very flat.

The Ugly
* Gil is an awful, awful human being. I couldn't stand him!

This is a beautifully written, yet deeply unsettling novel about the loneliness, un/wanted motherhood, silence and all kinds of non-relationships we have in life (unless we decide otherwise).

Gil and Ingrid's marriage is uneven - he is charismatic yet not very successful writer older than her; she has been his student whom he gotten pregnant. Gil is portrayed as simply egotistical man doing what he wants (read: sexual affairs) and Ingrid waits for him while raising their two daughters - while her internal turmoil grows and grows until she disappears. Her voice is interwoven into the story by her letters for her husband, which she had left in the various books in his personal library.
Both the start and the turn of her story is a moment when old Gil sees (or thinks so) his long gone wife. This makes him and his two daughters reunite in their childhood home.

I was strongly touched by the topic of dysfunctional relationships here - all the non-communication and miscommunication, all the non-sharing - somewhere deep everyone is feeling something (mostly fear hidden under many names; yet more noble feelings, too), yet they are simply living as every man is their own island (read: not relating).
I understand that that sad state of life is very possible, mainly when people live in the dysfunctional units.
Yet - is everything the man's fault? There is a hidden undercurrent of "all is selfish men's fault" and I feel manipulated by the writing (case in point: so Gil is cheater, but why Louise is not?).
Gil and Ingrid's children are of course hurt by their parents' toxic marriage - and I am happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel for them. It is freeing to see Flora to finally learn to trust (or at least opening to the possibility).

All in all, this is a very sad book (wise, yes, but profoundly sad). It makes me think about all the frozen relationships in my life and about the redemptive power of living in integrity and honesty - because this way you at least show the others the possibility that the freedom of heart exists - and that joy exists.

I found Swimming Lessons hard to get into, but when I did I was hooked. A poignant mystery which unfolds against a beautiful landscape.

Swimming Lessons is a very interesting book, examining a family from the point of view of the youngest daughter, interspersed with letters written by the mother to the father. I loved the gradual reveal of this book, and the way my sympathies shifted focus as more and more truths were revealed. It was fascinating to see Flora idealising her dad and still passionately believing that her missing mum is still alive, whilst reading her mum’s letters revealing the couple’s early relationship and the lead up to the disappearance. I also loved how each letter was hidden inside a book that was in some way relevant to the contents of the letter too.
As with the author’s previous book Our Endless Numbered Days, this is a beautifully written novel and is well worth a read.

Having read Our Endless Numbered Days and being intrigued by Fuller’s writing style, I wanted to read Swimming Lessons. Like her previous book, Swimming Lessons is all about the characters and their perceptions of reality and, more importantly, each other. Naivety, innocence and blind devotion can conceal the truth, as the characters discover throughout the novel.

Swimming Lessons has two narrations: letters from Ingrid to her husband, detailing the finer points of their marriage (adultery, money problems etc) that he has turned a blind eye to. The second is from their daughter, Flora, as she realises her father is ill and that her memories of her childhood may not be what they seem.

Fuller has a pleasant writing style: her books are easy to get swept up in even if you do not connect on an emotional level with the characters. It’s easy to spend an afternoon curled up with Swimming Lessons, not necessarily because it is gripping, but because it is, for the most part, a gentle read that carries you along.

I did, however, find it difficult to empathise with the characters. Flora is naïve; she worships her father and struggles to connect the man she idolises with the true man – one who wasn’t there for the family and cheated on her mother multiple times. Her attitude and approach to life is childlike despite her being an adult. She’s a nice girl, but she’s not a complex or a deep one.

In a way, she takes after her mother. Seduced by her university professor, Ingrid marries young after realising she is pregnant. But motherhood is not all it is cracked up to be and Ingrid struggles with a new baby. Her husband only appears to want children rather than focusing on her and has multiple flings along the way. Ingrid is angry, hurt and betrayed and talks about leaving. But she never acts, only continues to struggle to find her place. I wanted her to do more.

There is a mystery surrounding Ingrid’s disappearance. The letters she writes started to lead me towards a potential suicide – she was unhappy enough. But the last two pages of the book threw that into the air; it’s not clear who the character is. Although Ingrid didn’t connect with her children to a great extent, her letters revealed she does love them and it doesn’t feel like she would leave without at least telling them. It was unsatisfying to never know what the conclusion was.

The pace is gentle; the present narration takes place over a week while Ingrid’s letters span several years. The focus of the novel is on character relationships and perceptions and it’s interesting to see how Flora starts to come to terms with reality. There is a meandering feel to the plot due to the two timelines, but I like Fuller’s writing and it is easy to read.

Swimming Lessons could have had more depth and meaning to the plot and characters. Overall, however, a fairly decent read.

Even though this is a well written novel with a lot of potencial, I never found myself truly invested in the story or the characters.

A deft and skilful book about relationships, time and memory with beautifully realised characters and a compelling storyline that kept me reading long into the night. I loved the character of Flora and felt very connected to her as she unearthed her past through the letters she found. The setting was very vividly created and I loved the way that every time I closed the book, I felt like I was tearing myself away from Flora's world. It moved me to tears on several occasions and was never over written, allowing the reader's own imagination to respond to the spaces in between and meditate on their own lives, memories and unspokens. I adored this novel and will certainly be gifting it to many of my fellow book lovers this Christmas.

A beautiful and intriguing cover that heralds an equally intriguing story. Missing presumed drowned, Ingrid left behind a husband and two daughters at a loss as to what really happened. Was it an accident, was it suicide and if the latter, why?

The story starts with Gil, believing he has spotted his ‘dead’ wife, but Gil is ill and unreliable, but could he really have seen her? One daughter believes, or wants to believe he has, while the other has long accepted her mother’s departure. What follows is an unravelling of the relationship between Gil and Ingrid, and indeed Ingrid and her daughters. Told largely by letters written by Ingrid to Gil and hidden within his extensive book collection, they remain unread. Would they shed light on what really happened if the truth they revealed was known? More importantly will anyone discover their existence to find out?

The letters reveal a bittersweet and unconventional relationship that developed between Gil and Ingrid, he as her older University tutor and she as a young somewhat naive student. Against the odds the relationship led to marriage and ultimately children. He produced a best-selling book and to the outside world he was a lauded author and she the supportive wife and mother. But what was the reality? The letters reveal that their country life was not the perfect idyll that many might have believed. It was an unbalanced relationship, fraught with infidelity and mistrust. True we only have one side of the story, but it’s one written with such depth and emotion it’s hard not to believe its validity.

The story revealed by the letters is interspersed with the contemporary reality of Nan and Flora coping with Gil’s illness and coming to terms with their own troubled relationship. I will admit that I couldn’t particularly warm to Flora, and while Nan wasn’t the most endearing character either, it was much easier to understand her and have some sympathy for her situation, having always had to take responsibility and be the adult, almost from childhood.

Ingrid is certainly the person we feel we know most by the end of the book and yet she is the character we never meet in the flesh. She is the most sympathetic, assuming she is reliable, and the most rounded and three-dimensional. Yet for all that, she is still by the end an enigma as we are still left doubting what happened. But perhaps that is intentional. As Gil says to his students early in the book ‘all books are created by the reader’ so maybe it is for us to decide what we feel is the reality.

Swimming Lessons is a beautifully written book, that shines a light on the realities and truths of a troubled marriage, at times, joyous, at others claustrophobic. It highlights the frustrations of having unfulfilled hopes and dreams and how getting what you want isn’t always enough. It’s certainly thought-provoking and evocative and would make an ideal book club read because of the different responses it’s likely to invoke.

I liked the premise of this story - missing, presumed dead, parent writing letters and hiding them in books before their disappearance. The tension of their discovery hangs over the story but ultimately comes to nothing. The ending resolves nothing and this, coupled with a cast of extremely unlikeable characters, made this a somewhat unsatisfying read for me. The writing is, however, wonderful.

Claire Fuller's writing is poetic and haunting in this novel especially as we read a series of letters left by a wife who has been missing for 12 years.

The story surrounds Ingrid, and her horribly destructive relationship with her writer husband Gil. Her youngest daughter Flora has to come to terms with these revelations, after idolising her father for so long.

My only concern is while the back and forth narrative between Ingrid's letter and the present day is well laid out, the story itself is lacklustre and the epilogue is a little misleading leaving a question mark over her death. Good writing but plot could be more wholesome.

That difficult second novel : not quite a bulls-eye

I struggled with a certain, perhaps unfair, feeling of disappointment in Fuller's second novel. 'Unfair' because it is very much by comparison with the expectations created by Our Endless Numbered Days, an extraordinary and memorable novel.

This one is also beautifully written (she crafts language wonderfully) but it occupies perhaps a more 'normal' space - and paradoxically, seems more deliberately structured - I had far more sense of the writer at work, using various devices, whilst I was reading. That first novel had had me sucked into itself for most of my reading journey, so what the writer was doing to get me sucked in was not something I was considering mid-read. In this one, I was not completely engaged with characters, so the devices became a little more arch.

That first novel had been about a vanished child and father. In this one, it is the mother who vanishes, both 'in real' and, as we discover, how she vanished to herself, from herself, and felt the person she was, and should have been, stifled by her marriage to the charismatic Gil, and to the demands of motherhood

Ingrid had been a vivacious, sparky, intelligent but vulnerable student, with big dreams for the direction she wanted for her life. She fell, hook line and sinker for Gil, an older man, in many ways a typical figure - the selfish, driven artistic man, for whom his own creativity comes first. Ingrid disappeared, believed dead by Gil, and by Nan, the older, more practical daughter, grown into a practical woman. Flora, the youngest, more romantic, more artistic, more fanciful, never believed her mother had died.

Gil, now elderly, reveals a shocking encounter - he believes he has seen Ingrid, long presumed dead. The 'device' to get the reader (and Flora) into the past, to unravel the secrets of her parents' marriage consists of letters and marginalia hidden and written in books, which reveal the secret life, secret dreams and suffered sense of annihilation which Ingrid experienced; how she lost herself in Gil's shadow, and the centre space children demand. I found the device interesting to start with, but then began to be too aware of the game of it.

I will certainly want to read more by Fuller. 3 1/2 stars, raised to 4 - more than okay, very certainly, but not, for me quite sufficient for a clear 4. I received this as a digital ARC, from the publishers

A brilliant book that is very cleverly told. I loved the way we find out more about Gil from a few different sources, allowing us to build up a rounder picture than any of the characters themselves really have. I thought this was an excellent book and it has the right mix of elements for me - mystery, sadness, humour - and an interesting island location thrown in for good measure. Loved it!
My review will appear on my blog ahouseofbooks.wordpress.com next week. (1st May)

I really enjoyed this book. The author captures emotions, character and place extremely well. The plot for want of a better word is quite simple. Flora is called home by her sister as her father has had a fall and is in hospital. However you go on to learn that their mother disappeared some years before but that with no body Flora has never really admitted that she will never come back or in fact could be dead. The book is partly told in the present with the daughters and father and partly in two pasts told by letters written to the father but never posted.
I enjoyed the atmosphere and place of the book and the emotions felt were strong especially from Ingrid the mother
The only downside was that I read waiting to find out what has happened to the mother, will anyone find these letters, will Flora find any peace in regard to her mothers disappearance.............and didn't .......in some part this was ok but did feel the ending was very abrupt as if the book was rushed at the end to finish it. Still, a book i would recommend.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley

This is the first novel I've read by Claire Fuller and I very much enjoyed it. Swimming Lessons is a real character-driven novel told partly in letters from the past and partly in the present day. I loved the way that a picture was gradually built up of this family, the way all their brokenness, their quirks and emotions were shown in one light in the present day and then there was another layer when we read a letter from the past.

In the present Gil has had a fall and is in hospital so his daughters Nan and Flora rush back to their childhood home to look after their father. We see the house through their eyes - all the piles and piles of books crowding every inch of space and immediately I wanted to know more.

We then begin to read the letters from Ingrid - mother to the two girls, who disappeared one day years earlier and of whom no trace has ever been found. We see through her eyes the happy times, the heartbreaking times that she went through with Gil. We learn from the very first letter that she wrote to him many times and then hid the letters in a book she felt was appropriate in some way. We don't know how many Gil ever found or read, and there's an added melancholy feel that runs through the book caused by missed chances and lack of knowing. In the present day we see the daughters occasionally pick up a book, and we, the reader, know there is a letter from their mother to their father in there, but for whatever reason they don't find it. This left me feeling almost bereft at times.

There is a sense that Ingrid must be dead, for there have never been any sightings of her since the day she disappeared. Yet, there is also a haunting sense that she's just around the corner, that if you just turned around quicker she'd be there. This broke my heart at times when the two daughters could sense her. My mum died a few years ago and sometimes I can randomly smell her perfume in my house, and for a moment I go still and it feels like she's right there. It's comforting, even though I know it's not real. I think this sums up so much of this novel - the idea of people feeling things or sensing things but not always knowing what it means or how to deal with it. Then sometimes it's the opposite - Gil's lack of awareness, or lack of care, of his wife led to the emotional loss of her from their marriage before she was fully lost from all of their lives.

The ending of this book is perfect in my opinion, I honestly can't see how it could have ended differently. The whole story is like a family haunted by memories and secrets and things they don't know, so to wrap it all up in a neat bow would have been too heavy-handed. The beautiful wistfulness of the writing combined with the heartbreaking storyline is just incredible and I fell in love with this novel - it's one that will stay with me for a long time to come.

I have Claire Fuller's debut novel on my TBR and will definitely be reading it soon, and I already can't wait to see what she writes next.

Swimming Lessons is out now.

I received a copy of this book from Fig Tree / Penguin via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't really connect with this book.

It has a lot of redeemable qualities - the narrative structure using letters left in books is really interesting and something that keeps the plot moving between past and present in an engaging way.

However, I had so little sympathy or empathy for the characters that I couldn't maintain a strong interest in their affairs. I found Ingrid, the missing wife and focal point of the mystery, weak and passive, and her inability to change her life frustrated me. I loathed her husband, Gil, and understand the nefarious ways in which he'd ground her down, but I still wanted Ingrid to emerge stronger.

I read the book with my book club and the majority of people loved it. I think I just got too frustrated with the slow pace of the narrative and there wasn't enough depth of place, time or characterisation for my tastes.

Fuller's writing is eloquent and stylish so I would read something by her again. Maybe I'll try this one again, too, as I seem to be in the minority in not loving it.

This was a very interesting and intriguing book. Very well written and hard to put down once I'd got into it. Some lovely characters too. I am still thinking about the ending - was he there or not ?

The act of swimming often symbolises liberation within literature, particularly when carried out by a female character. Perhaps because floating along in the water, riding the waves as they come, surely this is the closest that humans can come to flight? Or is it perhaps just because it involves a shedding of everyday clothing? Here, swimming takes on a more enigmatic role, with a central character, Ingrid Coleman, presumed drowned. However, the novel opens with the words 'Gil Coleman looked down from the first-floor window of the bookshop and saw his dead wife standing on the pavement below'. With Ingrid having not been seen for twelve years, his elder daughter Nan presumes that he was hallucinating but the younger girl Flora, who has never believed her mother to be dead, feels sure that there is more to the sighting. Returning to the dilapidated family home to care for Gil, Flora hopes to find the answers that she has so longed for, but the reader quickly realises that she is not looking in the right places. With her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, lauded by critics and the winner of the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize, a follow-up was always going to be challenging but with Swimming Lessons, Fuller demonstrates that she is definitely a writer to watch.

While the main strand of narrative is centred around the adult Flora as she makes her way back to the old Swimming Pavilion which is the family home, in between each chapter we hear from Ingrid herself, as she writes letters to Gil about their marriage, hiding each one in a different book around the house. Twelve years later, Flora walks in the door and is astounded by the number of books her father has collected since last she saw him. Flora's boyfriend Richard was surprised to discover her father's name, Gil being famous for having written a naughty book in the years before Ingrid's disappearance. First meeting Ingrid when he was her creative writing professor, Gil was twenty years her senior, their relationship first secret and then a scandal. From early on however, Gil emphasises that the writer is unimportant, that it is the reader who creates the story, with each person doing so slightly differently. Over time, Gil has developed an obsession with collecting books with annotations, with tickets, postcards, bookmarks within. He was searching for more of these when he looked out the window of the bookshop. The reader knows that he has gathered up Ingrid's letters, we hear him remark to Richard that his wife was a writer, but his daughters know nothing of them.

For a character to espouse this view of how a story is built does render the novel slightly meta-fictional. Ingrid places each of her letters in a book with a title relevant to the event she is describing. As with Our Endless Numbered Days, several strands of the novel are left open for the reader to ponder, with an epilogue that is particularly enigmatic. Ingrid writes to Gil because in 1992 he is away from the family home and she describes how the nine year-old Flora searches for him. Later, the adult Flora makes reference to the same event but remembers Gil as being present. At another point, Flora remembers being lost outside and then rescued by her father who strikes away a 'white wraith'. The reader recognises this episode from the letters and know that the wraith was Flora's mother. Nan, who at fifteen had to take on mothering Flora, is aghast that her sister remembers Gil as being a loving father and that Ingrid had been the bad parent. Is the truth to be found within Fuller's words, or are we the reader supposed to seek it for ourselves?

Swimming Lessons has a gentler feel than Our Endless Numbered Days but retains the same slightly claustrophobic feel. Ingrid is a young girl with plans, hope and ambitions and her chronicle of how Gil chipped away at her choices is heartbreaking. Her struggles with motherhood and with being wife to an extremely errant husband are perhaps more mundane than those of Peggy but her growing despair is truly affecting. In the present day, we see a Gil who is remorseful for how he behaved. His daughters are puzzled by his actions but the reader is able to trace their motivation from Ingrid's letters and I could see that he is trying - too little and far too late - to make some form of amends. Again however, although we may have read Ingrid's letters, we have not read them as Gil and I wondered how far my interpretation of his reaction was 'true' - but then, Gil is fictional so does he not respond in the way that I imagine him? If, as he states that as his reader then I am his creator, do I decide how Gil feels?

I was caught though by how Fuller has captured this atmosphere of family secrets; so many novels deal with exposure and the rattling of skeletons from their cupboards but Swimming Lessons depicts a situation far more muted. How many families have Things We Don't Speak Of? The truth of Ingrid and Gil's marriage will remain between them, a door deliberately closed against their daughters. Fuller seems to emphaise that some things are simply not meant to be explained - early in the novel, fish rain down on Flora's car, an event which few people appear to believe and for which no reason is ever found. There is an elliptical quality to the narrative, with a number of events not quite spelled out and a sense of deliberate reinvention of that which is better forgotten. While Flora adores her father, Nanette is disgusted by him, ashamed of his writing and quite aware of how he betrayed her mother. Which sister has understood their parents the best? Yet still, the rhythm between the trio is of three people who do love each other, treading water and trying to find a way past the mis-communication. The spectre of Ingrid looms large and although occasionally her voice felt a little forced, (I am always suspicious of letters which claim to recall dialogue so perfectly) she remains the book's most beguiling character.

Both of Fuller's novels have left her readers with a great deal of food for thought, her stories lingering in the mind - she has a true gift for creating a narrative that is able to so thoroughly involve its readership. Like Fuller's debut, Swimming Lessons has the feel of a fairy-tale, with Flora desperately clinging to the mythology of her mother through the half-remembered anecdotes of friends and then the ghostly way in which Ingrid reveals herself to the reader. Yet still, Fuller is an observant writer, capturing her characters' mannerisms and gestures with apparent effortlessness but in a way that made each of them feel fully-realised - Nan's impatience, Gil's selfishness, Richard's bewilderment and Flora - poor Flora, always on the move, never still and somehow searching for peace. Part-thriller, exploring the psychology of a relationship gone sour, part-family story, Swimming Lessons conjures up the sea spray and sand of a cold British beach, with the mystery continuing up until the very last page. A gentler and less operatic tale than her previous work, Swimming Lessons is a subtle and compelling tale of family tragedy, memories only half-understood and the stories better kept silent.