A story about the sea, swimming, books and relationships. It’s like Claire Fuller was writing just for me.

Despite the blurb hinting that Swimming Lessons is a mystery, it’s not. It’s a book about marriage – specially that of Gil and Ingrid. Gil is a lecturer and a writer, famous for a scandalous novel. He’s also a collector of books, specifically those with notes in the margins and passages underlined.

“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.”

Ingrid meets Gil at university – she’s his student. Quickly seduced, she abandons her degree, marries Gil, is ensconced in his remote family home and has two children, Nan and Flora. After 16 years of marriage, Ingrid goes missing, presumed drowned but Flora and Gil never quite let go of the idea that she is still alive.

“It’s difficult to live with hope and grief… To keep imagining that we might come home one day and she’ll be waiting for us on the veranda, and at the same time living with the idea that she’s dead.”

The story is told from the perspective of Flora, in the present, and of Ingrid, who reflects on her marriage to Gil in a series of candid letters that she writes but never delivers. Instead, she hides the letters within the pages of different books. Enticingly, the answers to the family’s questions about Ingrid are all within arm’s reach –

“In the hallway, towering piles of books lined the walls all the way to the kitchen. Precarious volumes of paperbacks and hardbacks, cracked spines and dust jackets, rose like eroded sea stacks, their grey pages stratified rock. Many were higher than Flora’s head, and as she walked between them it was clear that one bump might have them tumbling in an avalanche of words.”

While the back-and-forth structure was worryingly predictable to begin with, I was quickly absorbed by Fuller’s clever use of repeated elements, notably the reference to the particular book that each letter was placed in, creating a pattern of stories within stories. The story structure is complex but never once feels contrived. Likewise, there are plenty of twists but none read as far-fetched.

Fuller writes beautifully and the addition of curious little details – mackerels falling from the sky and Flora drawing a skeletal outline on her lover’s skin – makes me think that if I had slowed my reading of this book, more would be revealed.

As it is, we never quite know the meaning of these oddities, which serves to highlight one of the major themes of the book – is it better to know the facts (the reality) or to imagine? Gil says, “Apparently I once told your mother that it was better to live without knowing because then you could always live with hope.” While in one of her letters to Gil, Ingrid writes, “This is what happened, the facts, the reality. I’ve always found that the reality is so much more conventional than imagination.”

Fuller’s descriptions of swimming and the sea were nothing short of stupendous. As someone who loves both things deeply, I appreciate her elemental understanding

“The tide was going out, sucking at the sand, rattling the loose stones, and the sea was the colour of wet denim…”

“A breeze was blowing in from the sea, a tang of military-green weed, and things half buried.”

This is a book about love, motherhood, trust and betrayal, and Fuller maintains exquisite tension right until the very end.

4/5 Absorbing.

I received my copy of Swimming Lessons from the publisher, Penguin Books UK, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Gill Coleman's wife Ingrid disappeared 12 years ago, leaving him to bring up their two daughters Nan and Flo.  One day Gill thinks he sees her in the street and so the story of this fractured and dysfunctional family begins to unravel.

The tale is told through two threads - a series of letters which Ingrid wrote to her husband in 1992 and hid in cleverly chosen books in their house, and in the 'present day' (2004) when Gill's daughters are reunited to care for their ailing father.   The characters are beautifully drawn - caring, conventional Nan, bohemian Flora and Gill, whom Ingrid's letters portray as  a hedonistic and self-obsessed man who cared more for his own fame and pleasures than the happiness of his wife and children.  The family lived in a converted swimming pavilion which belonged to Gill's once wealthy family home (since sold off to settle debts) and the house's bleak and windswept coastal location added thoughtful and sometimes rather melancholy feel of the book. 

I loved Claire Fuller's debut novel Our Endless Numbered Days and enjoyed this warm and insightful story just as much.

Flora is called to her hometown by her sister Nan when their father Gil had an accident after presumably having seen Ingrid – his wife who went missing, maybe drowned, twelve years ago. The girls try to reconstruct what happened on that day, Flora was only ten and Nan, five years older, had to take over the responsibility since Gil Coleman, the renowned writer, was simply not capable of family life and suffered from his wife’s lost. Slowly Flora has to adapt the conception of her family to an alternative reality which the small girl from then could not fully grasp. The relationship between father and mother was not full of love as the mother’s letters to her husband, written shortly before she disappeared, reveal and the father’s most successful novel might also contain a key to still unanswered questions.

Claire Fuller lets us immerse in a family story told from different points in time. First, we learn what Flora and Nan undergo in the present and how they explain the events from the past. Then, the mother’s letters give insight into an absent character’s point of view who has a completely different focus. On the one hand, the girls view on the parent’s relationship, on the other hand, the young student who loves her lecturer who is a lot older and seduces her and for whom she actually gives up the life she dreamt of. Only when put together do those two perspectives form a complete and complex picture of a family structure and the psychological impact of family life and loss of a parent.

Apart from the spotlight on the multifaceted relationships affected and strongly influenced by the experiences the characters undergo, the author has a second theme to offer: the relevance of literature for life. Apparently, the writer Gil Coleman used events from their real life for his work of art which did not remain without consequences. Apart from that, his life is centred around books and here, he has an extraordinary and interesting leisure activity: Gil is collecting novels with margin notes from the readers. At one point in the novel, his conception is explained:

Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important. (pos. 1287 in the e-book).

I like this idea a lot and think it is an interesting approach not only to concentrate on the writer’s process in producing the novel, but also to explore what happens in a reader in the process of reading. Moreover, Ingrid’s letters are hidden in novels. I would have liked to know more of these books since I believe that the specific one chosen for a particular letter might have another sub-message which might be lost on me.

All in all, a wonderful piece of art which I enjoyed a lot.

“Swimming Lessons” opens with an eerie scene in which a man follows the ghost of his lost wife to the sea. Is she real or a spectre of his imagination? This doesn’t develop into a gothic tale, but rather it’s the story of a family split apart through betrayal and secrets which intelligently and movingly portrays the psychological dilemmas of both the missing woman at the book’s centre and the family she left behind. Fuller does this through a structure which alternates between the stories of two adult daughters who care for their ailing elderly father Gil and the letters their lost mother Ingrid wrote before her disappearance. These letters she tucked into several books buried within the cluttered personal library that Gil has haphazardly amassed over the years. It’s a process of discovery which creatively shows the different perspectives of a broken family.

Having read Fuller’s first novel “Our Endless Numbered Days” it’s interesting to see how she structured both these books somewhat similarly, but the effect is quite different. Chapters alternate between an approximate present and a time some years previously to build a more rounded viewpoint on the startling personal choices some of her characters make. This is an interesting way of portraying time because information is meted out for the reader to show how the past directly impacts upon the present. In the case of this new novel, at the beginning Gil discovers another letter which Ingrid hid away for him. After the prologue we see him in his present condition largely from the perspective of his adoring younger daughter Flora. But we’re aware while reading Ingrid’s letters in between each chapter what effect these must have had upon Gil’s troubled conscience. It gives a more artful and nuanced viewpoint on a case where a wife and mother vanishes from her family.

At the heart of this novel is an enquiry into the nature of truth. It poses the question of whether it is “better to live without knowing because then you could always live with hope.” The story dramatically plays out this philosophical inquiry through Ingrid’s disappearance. She might have drowned in the sea as she frequently loved swimming alone in the early morning. Or she might have abandoned her family. The family and friends she left behind have different perspectives on this question and they reach varying conclusions during the course of this emotionally-engaging story. So much about our relationships and the respective fates of people who we’ve loved in life is ultimately unknowable. The trajectory of this novel often touches upon very tender feelings so I became totally swept up in the dilemmas of the highly engaging characters. The parallel stories of Ingrid’s development and the family who are still dealing with her loss many years later build to a dramatic conclusion.

Fuller has a great talent for giving a strong visceral understanding of her characters’ complex lives and motivations through small suggestions made in dialogue and action. Older daughter Nanette is highly capable, responsible and has a romantic crush on Viv, owner of a local bookshop. Whereas younger daughter Flora is impulsive, unwieldy and dismissive towards the man that she’s been recently sleeping with when he clearly adores her. In the case of Ingrid, we get her perspective only in the second person through the letters she’s written to her husband Gil. The complexity of her character slowly unfolds as she makes shocking revelations that reveal her complicated layers of grief and the precariousness of her situation. This gives a highly original and striking look at motherhood.

This novel will be especially pleasurable for any bibliophiles because of the portrayal of Gil’s considerable personal book collection. He’s not so much concerned with the content of these books as what previous readers have left within them: notes in the margins, doodles or paraphernalia tucked between the pages. I was reminded of Thomas Maloney’s debut novel “The Sacred Combe” where a man uncovers a family’s history through the things he finds hidden amidst the pages of their enormous library. This process of discovery not only builds a sense of reading as a communal activity but how every book is newly created through the process of reading – as a dialogue between author and reader. The books which Ingrid chooses to hide her letters within often make a wry commentary upon their content. For instance, an account of a chaotic gathering Gil brings Ingrid to is found in T.S. Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party” and a recollection about Gil’s frivolous spending is found in Martin Amis’ “Money”. It’s not necessary to be familiar with these various books to understand the witty way which Ingrid adds extra meaning to her letters through the choices of books she hides them within.

“Swimming Lessons” is a richly engaging and clever novel that gives an enlightening and fresh perspective on family life. Fuller movingly portrays the difficult decisions a mother must make and the complicated long-term effects of grief and guilt.

This was a good read but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I was expecting a mystery but I wouldn't really consider this to be a mystery novel. There's certainly a mystery in the story - Is Ingrid alive or dead and what happened to her that caused her disappearance? The whole story focuses on that mystery but predominantly this book is about people and different relationships. There were quite a few complex relationships at play in this book and every relationship was different. I really enjoyed reading about all of the relationships especially the relationship between Ingrid & Gil. I also really enjoyed reading Ingrids letters. Her letters were insightful, heartbreaking, honest and I really liked how she put her letters in books that related to the specific topic of a letter. Her letters were by far my favourite thing about this book and they were the main reason why I liked this book so much. The present day story was alright but not as good as the letters.

This book has a very authentic feel to it. The characters are unlikeable for the most part but they feel so real. The book is also interesting because there are quite a few gaps in the story, Claire Fuller leaves things quite open-ended so the reader has to fill in the gaps. I really enjoyed the open-ended aspect BUT I did not enjoy the ending. Once I finished this book, I was shocked. I didn't know what to make of that ending because it was open to interpretation. I thought I missed something but I didn't. Once I had time to reflect on the ending, I didn't like it that much. I like getting closure and there were too many questions left unanswered in my opinion.

I would recommend this and I would read something else by Claire Fuller. Her writing is pleasant and it flows very nicely. She was very subtle with her hints so it wasn't a predictable read.

*I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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"Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line."

I was a huge fan of Our Endless Numbered Days, so I had huge expectations from this book and they were almost all achieved!

i found this to be a much darker, bleaker read as it follows the storyline of Ingrid and Gil through the present timeline, and via letters that Ingrid wrote to her husband in the past and then hid in books for him to find. And this explains why he has hundrends of books stacked up in his home. His daughters return home to care for him following an accident and ill health, and the mystery of their mothers' disappearance still plagues the family and the story building up to that is revealed in letter form and I found this an extremely clever way of looking back.

Ingrids' story is heartbreaking and the letters really capture the despair she was going through and how her and Gil both really seemed to not want the same things. It tells of how they get together in the first place and you often wondered what she ever saw in him!

It is a quiet, unassuming book in my opinion, that relies heavily on the family dynamics, the hope they feel and the mistrust when the daughters start to learn of the past and things weren't all as rosy as they imagined life really was for their parents.

It was very difficult to feel any emotional connection with some of the characters as more of their traits and indiscretions were revealed and that is why I didn't find myself loving this book as before but it was still a really thought provoking look at a dysfunctional family and how secrets always tend to find a way of revealing themselves.

A melancholy story of a broken family told in fantastic prose. 3/5 stars.

Thank you to Penguin and NetGalley for giving me a copy of the book.

As with Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons showcases Claire Fuller’s wonderful descriptive prose. Every landscape, location (the Swimming Pavillion is a brilliant idea for a setting) and mood is captured evocatively, pulling the reader into and along with the story.

And, as with her first novel, she again shows skill in handling multiple timelines. This time she juggles three at once, all interweaving to build a complete picture of the dysfunctional family at the centre of her story.

Unfortunately, although this book is undeniably well-written, I just couldn’t get into it. I lay the blame squarely with the characters who were an unloveable bunch. Gil, in particular, needed a good kick up the backside. I kept hoping we’d learn something about him which would redeem him, even slightly. Instead, with each new detail I had more reason to loathe him. Ingrid was perhaps the most sympathetic character, but I felt she needed a thorough shaking for putting up with Gil’s crap. The rest of the characters were disappointingly bland and too weak to rescue the story from the shadow of their unlikeable and passive parents and friends.

Overall: if unlikeable characters aren’t a problem for you, I’d recommend Swimming Lessons. The writing is terrific and the various plot strands are well-handled, I just couldn’t get past the lack of anyone to like.

I loved the author's first novel but unfortunately this novel was distinctly average. Claire is obviously greatly interested in how the sins of the father are visited on the children but here the style and plot are nothing special. I liked Ingrid's letter but found the set up in presence day rather dull. The father in it was very flat. It would have been better reading it on a beach rather than on a cold January day!

This is not my usual read. I tend to go for high octane or creepy psychological thrillers but, every so often, I want to read something completely different. Like a palate cleanser so to speak. Something that will slow down my reading and make me savour every word. This turned out to be a great choice.
We meet Gil as he discovers some writing in one of his books. He moves over to the window to get the light better and thinks he sees his wife Ingrid outside. No big deal I hear you say, well, it is a bit considering that she disappeared, presumed drowned, 12 years ago. So, off he goes chasing after her but, being rather on the aged side, he falls before he can catch up. Hospitalised, his two daughters race to his bedside. Flora especially wants / needs to know what happened to her mother. In alternating chapters we hear from Ingrid herself via letters she is writing to Gil. Instead of posting them, she is putting them into his books. Each letter is appropriately filed away in a book befitting of its content and each letter starts off with what is her present and then goes on to detail her and Gil's past. When they met, what happened next, all the way up to when she left his life. Why she felt the need to do this in the way she did becomes apparent as more is discovered about their relationship. There is a lot to provoke thought in this book I was definitely drawn to the idea of readers and how they interpret books, how they put a part of them into what the author has already given which is the reason that no two people read a book the same. Not as keen on scribbling in books but I can see the fascination for others to examine.
The characters were all very well described and easy for me to connect with / emote to. Not that I liked all of them although I did change my mind about a few as time went on and I learned more about them. I do love a good dysfunctional family and you get that here for sure. There is also a little bit of a mystery but that isn't front and centre here. It's much more about suspense, drama and emotional discovery. I also really loved the dynamics between Nan and Flora, two peas in a pod they are not! Where Nan is the sensible older child, wanting and needing to mother both Flora and Gil, Flora is the more romantic, holding on to the possibility that her father is right when he says he has seen her mother. Some of the bickering between them is brilliant.
The other thing that really impressed me was the injection of the past (via the letters) at exactly the right times. Sometimes directly before/ after the corresponding scene in the present but occasionally displaced a little which then made their impact more powerful. We also have contradictory memories of the past from several characters which is also true. Me and my brother have very different memories of certain things that happened to us in the past. We both can't be right but also we both can't be wrong. I suspect that, like us, the truth for these characters is somewhere in the middle.
All in all, this was a beautiful read for me. I have had Endless Numbered Days on my TBR for far too long now. I really do have to get that read, and soon.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I loved this book. Claire Fuller perfectly captures the emotions of a family in turmoil, and brilliantly unites the events of the past and the present in this gorgeous narrative. Her characters are perfectly formed and one cannot help but be drawn into their turmoil and to feel the impact of their transgressions and their losses. Wholly reccommend it!

I read Claire Fullers previous book, and was totally taken with her writing style, so when I saw this new book I had to read it to see how they compared. There is something about the way she writes that has me totally entranced. She writes with clarity, while at the same time managing to describe a scene in the most beautifully poetic way.
This book, like her last, 'Our Endless Numbered Days', jumps backwards and forwards in time between two story lines, that slowly come together over the course of the book. The story begins with Gill, an aging writer and father of two daughters, who glimpses his wife, Ingrid out of the window. The only problem with this, is that his wife has been missing, presumed dead for the last 20 years.
A compelling and gripping storyline, that slowly reveals its secrets until you simply cannot stop reading.

Claire Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days was one of the best books I read in 2016. I fell in love with the beautiful prose and compelling story line, so when I saw that she was releasing a new book I was over the moon. I’m always a little nervous when I start the second novel of an author whose debut book I loved; what if was a one off? What if I hate this book? What if I haven’t actually found another author to add to my list of ‘Writers Whose Books I’d Walk Over Hot Coals to Read’? Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed and Claire Fuller has joined that list as I loved this book and couldn’t put it down (at this point I must apologise to my husband for ignoring him for 24 hours whilst I had my nose pressed against my Kindle, sorry!).

Swimming Lessons begins with Gil Coleman, an elderly writer, browsing a second hand book shop and spotting his wife, Ingrid, standing on the street outside. This is odd, as she went missing years earlier and is presumed to be dead. Chasing her through the streets he gets injured, earning himself a stay in hospital and causing his youngest daughter, Flora to return to Dorset to join her sister Nanette (Nan) in caring for him.

This book is beautifully written. Claire Fuller uses a wonderful dual narrative technique where we learn Ingrid and Gil’s story via letters that Ingrid has written to Gil and has hidden inside some of his hundreds of books littering their house, whilst the present day is shown to us through Flora’s eyes. Gil is incredibly flawed; a womaniser, philanderer and charmer but Flora idolises him, refusing to see anything but good in her dad. Her sister, Nan, was forced to become a mother to Flora when she was in her mid teens, breeding years of resentment for her wandering dad and at having to grow up before her time.

Despite Ingrid being never really ‘present’ in the novel she was by far my favourite character; interesting, with depth and incredibly complex. Hers and Gil’s tale was romantic, heartbreaking and horrifying and the uncomfortable intricacies of their marriage were not shied away from. Starting in the 1970’s when Ingrid was Gil’s student at University and continuing through to the time she went missing, Ingrid’s letters are unflinchingly honest and depict the life that she and Gil led at the converted Swimming Pavilion they lived in on the Dorset coast.

Early on Gil says that a book is about the reader, not the author and that a reader will fill in any gaps left by the writer.

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line…What do you think happens in the unsaid things, everything you don’t write? The reader fills them with their own imaginations.”

This is certainly the case for this novel, I finished it with more questions that answers (did Gil read all the letters? What exactly happened to Ingrid?) but I wasn’t put off by this; Swimming Lessons isn’t a book that can be wrapped up in a bow with all of the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I’d far rather read a book which made me think and left things open to interpretation especially when I was so emotionally invested in the characters, because I just didn’t want to let them go and i’ll be thinking about them for some time to come.

I loved Claire Fuller's debut novel Our Endless Numbered Days and was delighted to be approved for Swimming Lessons.
It is widely acknowledged that writing the second novel can be difficult especially when it has to live up to the success of the first.
Swimming Lessons is the story of the Coleman family. Gil, famous author, university lecturer and seducer of Ingrid, his student and eventually his wife. Flora, the youngest daughter and art student and Nan, oldest daughter and midwife.
The essence of the novel revolves around the disappearance of Ingrid and Gil's apparent sighting of her 12 years later. When Gil falls Flora returns home to The Swimming Pavilion to help sister Nan care for him.
old wounds are reopened and Flora, like her father is convinced Ingrid is still alive.
Ingrid relays the families story in the form of letters she writes to Gil and subsequently hides in the many books that live in the house. What she reveals is the story of a turbulent marriage, full of affairs and her struggles with motherhood.
What I really liked about this novel are Fuller's characters. Her portrayal of Flora is of a girl who is almost childlike and naive in her outlook with an unwillingness to accept the circumstances she faces whilst Nan is realistic and almost cold in the way she reacts and deals with things.
So totally different from her first novel and, although not unique in its subject matter, this story of a fractured family is beautifully written and a real joy to read.

I thought this was very good indeed. I enjoyed Our Endless Numbered Days very much; if anything, Swimming Lessons is better.

This is a novel of character. The plot doesn't sound all that much: Flora's mother went missing when Flora was 10 years old, and interspersed with Flora's story are letters written by her mother Ingrid, and left randomly in her father's book collection telling the story of her, shall we say, chequered relationship with Gil, Flora's father. Now she returns to her seaside childhood home where her father has had an accident and is being looked after by her older sister. What emerges – beautifully – is the effect on all the family of Gil's infidelities and unreliability, and their response to the uncertainty of what happened to Ingrid.

It's really well done. Claire Fuller writes excellent, clean prose, she creates vivid and completely believable characters whose decencies and flaws are very real and she has a lot of important things to say about the nature of family, of trust and of finding who we really are. There is also some lovely stuff about reading, books and the importance of the reader among other things, and it's all done with a lovely, straightforward but delicate touch. Look for the subtle way Fuller uses the floorboard in front of the stove that creaks, for example; it's not important to the plot and is almost invisible, but it is unshowy detail like this which makes the whole thing so intricately rich and believable. Here are also some great lines, like Ingrid responding to the classic philanderer's "It doesn't mean anything," with "It means something to me!" Or this little passage when Flora discovers a bookplate in an edition of Moby-Dick: " ' This book belongs to,' Flora read out, 'Sarah Sims.' The writing was laboured, the pen scoring the paper, and she imagined a young girl, hard-working, her tongue sticking out in concentration. Under her name, Sarah had added, 'But I don't want it.' " I loved that - and lots more.

I found Swimming Lessons involving, readable and very rewarding and I can recommend it very warmly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Swimming Lessons is a beautiful book; slow and quiet yet dense with frustrated emotions.
I loved the structure of Swimming Lessons, with Ingrid's letters describing her relationship with Gil interspersing the present day where Flora and Nan are dealing with their elderly father. It allows you to slowly put everything together. Swimming Lessons is definitely one of those books that you have to go back and read again to see all the references you missed.

Leaving the letters in the books was a fun concept though possibly a little unrealistic. But I suppose if Ingrid had just shoved the letters into Gil's hands there would be no book. (If I was her I might have shoved them somewhere else.)

The writing is wonderful; it's infused with feelings and passions though these are bubbling under the surface and often avoided by the characters.

There are also small touches throughout the novel which made me smile, like the frequent references to Shirley Jackson, one of my favourite authors, and Flora describing smells as colours.

"The smell of drawing was cream, a clotted and buttery yellow."

The characters themselves are flawed but relatable and invoke strong feelings. Gil infuriated yet confused me, I felt empathy and a little frustration for Ingrid and wanted to hug Flora yet give her a well deserved kick at the same time.

My only issue with the book is that I wish Fuller had explored the character of Nan a bit more, she's the only one that doesn't feel quite so real and is a bit too much of a cliche; the older child taking on the responsibilities of the family. She feels like a foil to Flora instead of a full character in her own right.

Swimming Lessons is a book that, though slow in places, still poses a lot of questions for the reader, about how different life could have been or what they would do in the situation.

I now can't wait to read Claire Fuller's first book.

My Rating: 4/5

I received an ARC of the book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

Swimming lessons
by Claire Fuller
published by Fig Tree/Penguin, 2017

My review:
The Sunday Times described a ‘singing simplicity’ in Claire Fuller’s first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days. This holds true for her second novel, Swimming lessons where it evokes the landscape of the sea that permeates this very accomplished and fine literary mystery: you smell the seaweed, you feel the pebbles on the beach and you experience the shock of the cold sea itself.
Gil, a successful but ageing writer, surrounded by piles of books he has collected, lives in a beautiful but rundown house by the sea, looked after by his older daughter, Nan. When he catches sight of Ingrid, his wife who has been missing, presumed dead for 12 years, his family gather round to support him. His younger daughter, Flora, who dotes on him, is determined to track down their mother – she has always felt a certain responsibility as she was the last person to see Ingrid before she disappeared from the beach.
The novel is plotted with two, alternating timelines: in the present day Flora tries to find out the truth about her father’s writing career, his complex relationships and what has happened to her mother. While in1992 her mother, Ingrid, writes letters to Gil telling the history of their marriage from her own point of view – from innocent, idealistic student, to disappointed, middle-aged mother. She hides each letter in one of his many books with the proviso that only he is to read them. Flora has no idea that the letters exist.
In both stories swimming in the sea is a major theme: for Ingrid it is therapy, an escape from domesticity, and from a marriage that has not been what she expected; for Flora swimming is a way of healing and for her to be close to her mother. Clare Fuller skilfully interweaves the strands to form a very satisfying novel that leaves the reader guessing right up to the end.
Swimming lessons is a dissection of domestic relationships, sibling rivalry and friendships; it examines the long-lasting impact that mistakes and deceptions have on a family and friends. This novel is deftly plotted, beautifully written, moving, complex and intriguing. A book, like the sea, to immerse yourself in.
Biography:
Claire Fuller has a first degree in sculpture which is evident in the fine detail she gives to physical descriptions of the natural world. She began writing when she was forty and has a Masters in Creative and Critical writing. Her debut novel Our Endless Numbered Days won the Desmond Elliot Prize for debut fiction in 2015, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick for Spring 2016 as well as being shortlisted for other major prizes.

Notes:
Claire Fuller blogs on https://clairefuller.co.uk

Majestic, almost poetic prose, this story is told in the form of a present day narrative, and through the letters written by Ingrid in the past, inserted into the books around the house. These letters are the story of her marriage, and it is the mysterious relationship between Ingrid and Gil that weaves throughout time. At first we meet Gil who is the distant but present father to Flora and Nan, but through the letters we know that Ingrid has endured a period where Gil was missing from family life. It is this enigmatic tale of their love that is the essence of Swimming Lessons.