4.5★
Wonderful writing, great story, interesting style. The book opens in 2004 with Flora rollicking in bed for two days with her current young man when she gets a call from her older sister to come “home” because Dad’s had an accident and is in hospital. Nanette (Nan) is 5 and a half years older and is a stable, reliable nurse.

We learn that their mother, Ingrid, disappeared 12 years ago.

Flora’s chapters are written third-person, as are her father’s. Dad is Gil Coleman, a former professor and now famous author of a sexually explicit best-seller he wrote some years ago. He said once in class:

“Secret truths . . . are the lifeblood of a writer. Your memories and your own secrets. Forget plot, character, structure; if you’re going to call yourself a writer, you need to stick your hand in the mire up to the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder and drag out your darkest, most private truth.”


Which is exactly what he did. He was known for seducing pretty students, but that didn’t stop Ingrid from falling for him, too. He was twice her age, but who’s counting when it’s 1976 and you’re 20? He takes her to his family’s “home”, which used to be the Swimming Pavilion overlooking a beach, and they rollick all summer. Ingrid remembers:

"We must have spent most of that time without clothes when we were indoors; do you remember me surprising the postman as he stood at the front door with a letter to be signed for? After I returned to bed I told you how his gaze had started on my face and slid downwards at the same rate as his eyebrows went up.
. . .
The envelope stayed where you dropped it, unopened on the floor, another document marking time with the rings of coffee cups. (Later I found burned pieces of it amongst the nettles, and it was years before I understood its significance.)"


They party with friends, friends of friends and anyone who wants to get out of London, drinking copious amounts of whiskey and swimming naked. You can see where Flora gets it, eh? But it isn't Gatsby-like, since nobody has money and people are camped out in the yard.

Ingrid’s best friend, Louise, tries to discourage her from marrying Gil when Ingrid discovers she’s pregnant. She refers to him angrily as "that man". But Ingrid is besotted and Gil is devoted to her and the new baby.

We know all of this because immediately after our introduction to Flora, we begin reading letters which Ingrid wrote to Gil in 1992 before she "left", and placed between pages of appropriate books for him to discover. A memory about fish and chips is left in a copy of Goodbye, Mr. Chips: To You, Mr. Chips

He has collected books almost to the point of madness, noting what readers have written or drawn in the margins and the scraps of paper or cards or napkins people have left as bookmarks.

Chapters switch between Ingrid’s first-person account of their life together and the current situation with people worrying about Gil and gossiping about the past and tripping over an inordinate number of books in the house. His explanation for his collection:

“‘Forget that first-edition, signed-by-the-author nonsense. Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important. But often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind. All these words’ – Gil swung his arm out to encompass the table, the room, the house – ‘are about the reader. The specific individual – man, woman or child – who left something of themselves behind.’”


We suspect Gil is still looking for more of Ingrid’s letters, but his daughters know nothing about that. The letters are all dated, but not numbered, and they lead right up to the day she left. Did she drown on one of her long ocean swims? On purpose, if she did? We don’t know and neither does the family. As various secrets are revealed, we learn more as the characters learn more. Nobody is blameless.

Ingrid was a free spirit, tied down with kids, a mermaid who used to slip down to the beach and swim at midnight, her only escape from a stifled domestic existence with a husband who keeps her barefoot and pregnant and stays away for long periods, possibly womanising again.

This was such a far cry from her intended life of travel and adventure. Only in the water did she feel truly at home, truly alive, and it’s also about the only thing she and Flora, her youngest daughter, had in common.

Ingrid was a reluctant mother but she managed with Nan. Flora was what my own mother would have called “a difficult child”, but reading the short descriptions of her behaviour – always naked whenever possible, didn’t like various foods touching each other on her plate, troublesome at school, preferred to be in the water alone – today we’d have “diagnosed” her as “on the spectrum”.

But her father adored Flora – a wild mermaid like her mother in so many ways. He and Flora have never really accepted that Ingrid might be dead. Flora is adamant that she isn’t.

We meet Gil just before his accident, when he’s sure he’s seen Ingrid standing in the rain looking up at his window.

The weather– rain, storms, winds, heavy surf – is a major backdrop, and Fuller paints it wonderfully. The rocky, slippery terrain at the point of the beach was so treacherous that I was cold, muddy, and miserable a good deal of the time. (I did get slightly impatient with some repetition of certain words, but overall, it's excellent.)

Gil goes out in the heavy weather to hunt for his lost wife. He spotted her headed for an area below where he is.

"Gil slowed but continued to shuffle, head lowered, along the promenade until below him the sand ended and the breakwater boulders and the massive concrete blocks began, wet with leaping spray. The rain flew in his face and the wind buffeted him, pushing him into the metal railing at the edge of the walkway, tilting him over it as though he were being passed from hand to hand in a violent dance.”


And that's where I'll leave you, back at the beginning to read and enjoy yourself.

There is some explicit sex but not a lot and certainly nothing I found offensive.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for the preview copy from which I have quoted (and hope I'll be forgiven for). Quotes may have changed, but trust me, it's a good book!

The first thing I liked about this book was its construction – the present day story punctuated by Ingrid’s letters, not sent but placed within the pages of books with links to their subject matter. And the letters tell a fascinating story of indifference and betrayal, of passion and wrongdoing – an ill-founded marriage in a constant state of disintegration, painful to watch. Ingrid was possibly the only character in this book I remotely warmed to, and I loved the clarity of her voice – it’s a real tribute to the writing that it’s possible to care about a cast of characters that I wouldn’t otherwise give the time of day to. And the strength of the writing was the other thing I loved – an immense depth of human detail, an eye for the little things, the layers of story coupled with the watery imagery that pervades the book as a whole.

Both stories, past and present, are totally absorbing, the unfolding of a mystery: while I’ll admit that some of the nuances and deeper meanings may have passed me by (my fault, not the author’s) there were parts of this book that I lingered over, even re-read, because they made such a strong impression. And Flora, Nan, Richard, even Gil himself – they might not be people I’d choose as my social circle, but I found it quite impossible to tear my gaze away from them. Lest you doubt it, I loved this book – very different from Our Endless Numbered Days other than in the quality of the writing, but every bit as compelling.

It takes a while to really get a handle on the story within this book. There are two main threads of which one is the present day. In this thread Gil is an elderly man who has taken a tumble and whose daughter Flora comes back home to help look after him with her sister Nan. Flora's current boyfriend makes the journey as well. There are a lot spiky relationships within this group. The second thread takes the form of letters written by Gil's missing wife, Ingrid. In these Ingrid tells the story of their relationship from her point of view with her feelings. These letters are hidden within books (the precise ones are detailed at the end of each letter) but we never know if Gil found any of them.

I had a strange relationship with this book. I enjoyed reading it but once I put it down, the book just went from my mind. Usually I spend time thinking about a book whilst I am doing other things but this was not the case with this one. The characters just didn't really hold my interest and I wasn't that bothered about what happened to them. To be fair, the characters are not particularly nice. Gil is a serial womanizer and poor provider for his family. He leaves his family for quite long periods of time, supposedly promoting his book. Ingrid isn't a particularly nice person either though not a serial adulterer. She leaves her family when Flora is just 8 years old. She walks away and disappears. It is a surprise that Nan has grown up quite stable and no surprise that Flora doesn't!

There is a lot of description within this book. This is something which the author is good it and uses to great effect. I had no trouble in picturing the scenes.

I am not entirely sure if I enjoyed this book. I think I did but it really hasn't left much of an impression. I am not left with any desire to know if Ingrid returns or how things turn out with Flora and Richard. This is the second book that I have read by this author and is not, in my option, as good as her previous work - Endless Numbered Days. This book just never got under my skin.

This is a character driven story rather than an action packed read. I enjoyed the first part of the book more but felt it started to lose its way half way through. I wanted to know what had happened to Ingrid and whether she was still alive. There was some feeling of anticipation as to whether the youngest daughter, Flora would discover a terrible secret but sadly for me, this anticipation just fizzled out. An ok read but not sure I would rush back to read more by the same author.

Claire Fuller' s first novel was clever and interesting, but this one, in my opinion, is a perfect little masterpiece. It is a beautiful, elegiac piece of writing, brooding over the lives of an writer and his wife, who disappeared years earlier. As the novel proceeds we read her letters to him, recounting their shared life. Letters that were written and then hidden inside volumes of his vast collection of books.

Gradually the reader comes to understand the nature of the pivotal relationships within the novel and to follow the writer to his final days.

Quite beautifully written, with a precise sense of place, time and personalities. A novel to revisit.

Thank you Net Galley and Penguin Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book. It was an interesting read, not a beautiful one. The story is told from two different perspectives: on the one hand we have Ingrid's letters to her husband from which we slowly discover details about their life, marriage and the birth aof their two daughters. On the other hand, we have Flora's perspective (the youngest daughter), her response to Ingrid's disappearance and her relation to her older sister Nan.
I know most of the readers connected so much to Ingrid through her letters, however I did not happen for me. Actually I did not manage to connect with either of them. I expected more from the characters. What kept me reading this book was just curiosity: is Ingrid still alive or not? I expected to see the characters change along the story, There is so much silence in this novel, which made my reading become so frustrating.. I felt compassion for Ingrid at the beginning of the novel, when she hears about ther husband's affair, but I ended up hating her.

A few years ago somebody told me that in any relationship there is always an "Ernie" and a "Bert" (from Sesame Street, you know?). I am always the Bert and I used to not particularly like that - because being the Ernie is more fun and people tend to like the Ernie's of the world more. Even at 17, I was always the person to tell others to be more quiet at parties as to not disturb the neighbours, I was the one blowing out candles when the drunkest person in the room decided having candles would make the party more intimate (that did happen on more parties I went to than you would believe), and teenagers tend to not appreciate this person at parties.

Why am I telling you this?

Because Flora - one of the main characters of this book and the focus of most chapters - is such an Ernie and her poor older sister had to take on the role of Bert when their mother disappeared. Flora drove me up the walls; she is so unbelievably self-centered and just refuses to grow up and then has the nerve to be annoyed at her sister for being responsible. I think that was not the emotional response I was supposed to take from this book and it made this at parts really difficult to read for me.

The story is told both in the present when Gil had an accident and his two daughters come to look after him and in the past through a series of letters that their mother Ingrid left for her husband to find in different books all over the house. I love stories framed in an unconventional manner, so this structure worked extremely well for me. I like how the two story lines were woven together and how Claire Fuller uses this device to show how memory can be deceiving.

Ingrid was by far my favourite characters and I so wanted her to be happy. She is also the most convincing, fully fleshed out character out of this family and I would have liked to spend even more time with her.

It is a pretty great book, but in the end, I couldn't ignore my emotional response to it. But this is pretty much a me thing and I am sure lots of others will love this book more than me.

___
I received an arc of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Penguin Books, Fig Tree in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for that!

Dull, undeveloped cookie-cutter characters, boring plot, poorly paced, and lacks tension. It was very readable, somehow, yet I could've stopped at any point without wondering what happened next. Disappointingly mediocre.

I couldn't put this book down. The lyrical writing was beautiful and the exploration of the social constrictions on Ingrid was thought-provoking and poignant. I would definitely recommend this book.

An unusual story; one I initially found a little difficult to get into but so glad I did so. Well written and so much more than chic lit (not that there is anything wrong with that). If you fancy something different, something well written then this is it.

Flora's mother went missing when Flora was ten years old. Now an adult she has to rush home when her father has an accident, claiming that he has seen her mother. In fact the plot is little more than that! This is a multi-layered novel about characters and reading and not a lot more. Some reviewers have raved about the writing and in parts I really enjoyed this book, However I found other parts very self-indulgent and irritating

I didn't really know what to expect when going into Swimming Lessons. I haven't read the author's previous work - Our Endless Numbered Days - and I couldn't decide from the synopsis whether I was going to get myself into another thriller spawned by the Gone Girl craze, or a quiet contemporary like, say, Everything I Never Told You. I can say confidently now that it's more the latter.

Swimming Lessons is a character-driven novel about a family, a love, a marriage, and how hope can be the worst thing sometimes. Here, the hope of Gil Coleman and his daughters, Nan and Flora, has haunted the family for twelve years, ever since Ingrid Coleman (Gil's wife and the girls' mother) disappeared and was never found.

Though Ingrid presumably drowned, the lack of a concrete answer plagues the family: could that woman disappearing around the corner be her? Could the phone ringing in the middle of the night be their mother finally wanting to return home?

The opening chapter sees Gil suffering an accident after seeing his long lost wife standing below his window. His daughters rush home to be with their father, but are perturbed by Gil's claims that he saw Ingrid and that she is alive. Mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night from withheld numbers make Nan and Flora even more anxious, especially when Gil claims their mother was on the phone.

It's a beautiful, quiet, sometimes eerie novel. On the one hand, it's simply a compelling story of people's lives - from Flora's perspective in the present, and through Ingrid's letters that reveal the history of her relationship with Gil - but on the other, it constantly has the reader wondering what is real. Did Gil really see Ingrid that day? Or is it the delusions of an old man keeping Ingrid alive?

The best parts of the story are Ingrid's letters. They weave a tale of a young woman who gets caught up in a love affair with her enigmatic college professor, before becoming pregnant and settling into a troubled marriage. Secrets emerge and tragedy arises, all in the author's straight-forward, non-manipulative style.

I really loved, perhaps most of all, the running theme of how the reader brings their own interpretations and experiences to a book. Early on, we see a young Gil collecting used books with notes in the margin, because he believes these are special little insights into the readers themselves. And then, of course, Ingrid's story and all the answers Gil, Nan and Flora seek are hidden within the books of Gil's collection. Ingrid leaves her letters - and little pieces of herself - behind in the books scattered around the house, meaning the answers were always right there, within reach.

The author leaves us with this thought-provoking message: books contain the stories of the readers, are defined and interpreted by the readers; no two readers ever read the same book, or leave the same things behind in it.

I am really torn with my review for this book. It is a strong 3.5* (oh how I wish GR gave an out of 10 rating!).

I absolutely loved Claire's debut, Our Endless Numbered Days, and was extremely excited about being given an opportunity to read this as a review copy for an honest review.

There is so much that is absolutely beautiful and unique about this story, The writing is faultless - the story covers three main points in time - when Ingrid & Gil meet and start their relationship, the time before Ingrid disappears (both through letters from Ingrid to Gil hidden in relevant books within his overflowing 'library') and from Flora's point of view when she has returned home when Gil falls ill.

The descriptions of the house, and Ingrid's letters are especially evocative. However, this just didn't quite live up to Our Endless Numbered Days, and missed a little spark for me.

Flora seemed such a forthright, precocious, self-centred child, and yet Flora almost seemed indistinct to me as an adult.

Perhaps this was the wrong time for me to read it - it may be one that I read again in the future. It definitely wasn't a bad book - far from it, but I felt that I missed something.

A really gripping read with characters that you could really relate to and complex relationships. the structure which was not chronological meant the book was well paced and the reader learns a bit more about the characters as the story develops. the literary references attached to Ingrid's letters were also a good device for linking the separate stories together. A book i really enjoyed.

When famous author Gil Coleman thinks he spots his long-vanished wife out the window, he rushes after her and ends up falling. His two daughters return home to look after him and gradually the mystery of their mother’s disappearance begins to be unravelled. Through alternating perspectives – that of Flora, the youngest daughter who finds it hard to accept that her mother is dead, and that of Ingrid herself, who narrates her own story through a series of unsent letters to her husband which she has hidden in his treasured books – the background is filled in and both protagonists and readers come to some sort of understanding. A nice idea and on the whole it is effectively carried out, but I found that the characters lacked depth and often acted in clichéd and stereotypical ways, and the dialogue was often unconvincing. Claire Fuller writes well but sometimes doesn’t pull all the threads together. Some of her metaphors, whilst having an immediate impact, aren’t integrated well enough into the narrative. All in all, I didn’t particularly enjoy the novel and found much of it predictable.

Swimming Lessons is an unusual and interesting story. Gil Coleman is a former university lecturer and a published author, much older than his wife, Ingrid, who disappears one day, leaving behind Gil and her two daughters. The story is told alternately in the present day, as Flora and Nan return to the Swimming Pavilion where they grew up, brought there by Gil's possible sighting of Ingrid, and also by Ingrid herself in a series of letters to Gil, hidden in his many books, as she tells the story of their life together. I thought this was a really clever and quirky way of revealing a story to the reader without doing so to the other characters, particularly as at the end of each letter Ingrid names the book that she has placed the letter in and the book is always relevant to the contents of the letter.

The main characters in Swimming Lessons are all deeply flawed and I can't say I particularly liked any of them. Richard, Flora's (maybe) boyfriend and Nan, her sister, are probably the easiest to like. I did feel a lot of sympathy for Ingrid too and I cared about all the characters despite the fact they weren't always that likeable.

Claire Fuller is a very elegant writer. Her style is understated, lyrical and very descriptive. Every little detail is important and plays a part and her leading players are well-rounded. For instance, Flora clearly has a problem with what I call food contamination, i.e. she doesn't like certain foods touching each other and this helped to flesh out her character for me. I felt like I could imagine every one of the characters, both in looks and in personality.

I found this book to be really rather sad. It's about infidelity, love, loss and hope and there's almost an inner ache to the novel, if that makes any sense. There's a real poignancy to it. There were a number of questions for me throughout that ended up going unanswered but that didn't matter. The whole novel is an exercise in imagination and I was prepared to use my imagination to try and decide what had actually happened to Ingrid and what would happen to the other characters in the future.

A slow burner of a book but one which sets the imagination alight, this is not really a book about Ingrid's disappearance but more about a dysfunctional family, a number of jigsaw pieces that never quite fitted together properly. Claire Fuller is an insightful writer, capturing emotions so well. I haven't yet read her first novel, Their Endless Numbered Days, but I really must do so.

My review as posted on Goodreads:

I found myself drawn into this book, mainly because of the fictional setting on the Dorset coast. Although most place names are fictional, if you know the area as I do, the sense of geography adds to the enjoyment.

One of the shelves on which I have placed this book is 'confusing' as at times I wasn't sure where the tale was going.

However I'm glad I stuck with it, because most of the loose ends came together eventually.

Claire Fuller has created and eclectic group of characters within this novel, but she draws out there personalities in an interesting way.

An enjoyable tale. I give thanks to Netgalley and the publisher, Fig Tree (Penguin UK) for a copy in exchange for this review.