Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller (Epub)

Description

Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan.

Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of February 2017: A famous elderly author looks out the window of a bookstore and thinks he sees his deceased wife. Upset by this event, he takes a near-fatal tumble and winds up in the hospital. Flora, his youngest daughter, returns home to help care for him—shortly thereafter, letters from her mother will be discovered hidden inside the books of her father’s prized library. Thus begin two plotlines, as Flora and her sister care for their father, and as their mother’s letters lay out her side of the marriage—starting with their first meeting when she was a student and he was a professor. Is their mother dead now, or did she run away? And what other secrets are hidden inside the letters? Well-paced and finely detailed, Swimming Lessons is a mystery about an uncoiling family that will keep you turning pages and cause your loyalties to ebb and flow like a tide. –Chris Schluep, The Amazon Book Review Review “Fuller proves to be a master of temporal space, taking readers through flashbacks and epistolary chapters at a pace timed to create wonder and suspense. It’s her beautiful prose, though, that rounds this one out, as she delves deeply to examine the legacies of a flawed and passionate marriage.” ― Booklist, Starred Review”Ingrid is a brave but floundering heroine who puts down “all the things [she hasn’t] been able to say in person” in her letters, resulting in a portrait so intimate, you feel as if you’ve read a novel written on the secret walls of her very mind. A deeply moving read, with a mystery that keeps you turning pages.” ― Oprah.com, Editor’s Pick”As in her gorgeously harrowing Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller returns to the territory of a mother’s disappearance and a father’s lies with bewitching and page-turning results. If anything, Swimming Lessons is an even more complex puzzle box of a book, excavating darkly knotted family secrets, intricately cruel betrayals and layers of ambiguous loss. Fuller is so clear eyed, poised and psychologically shrewd in the unfolding of her tale, you will be kept guessing until the final penetrating sentence. An extraordinarily smart and satisfying read.” ― Paula McLain, author of THE PARIS WIFE”Playing out the various scenarios is almost like a “choose your own adventure” story for adults. For me, Ingrid’s story, voice, and perspective, makes for a haunting, motivating, and fantastic read.” ― Steph Opitz, Book of the Month Club Selection”Swimming Lessons continues Claire Fuller’s mastery of beautiful language and heartbreaking imagery, which lays bare the stories of infidelities, lies, revivals of love and then demise of those loves. The women of this novel fight for their very souls, and their stories unfurl like flags of independence appearing in to wave from her landscape of great books and art and hope.” ― Susan Straight, author of BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE”Claire Fuller has captured love in its fullest form, nursed on betrayal and regret and guilt. Gil cheats on and abandons his wife too many times, until she disappears, leaving her clothing on the beach, and he can’t know even if she’s still alive. She leaves only letters, hidden in a great library of books, and he’ll search for her until his end. Swimming Lessonsis so smoothly, beautifully written, and the human failures here are heartbreaking.” ― David Vann, author of AQUARIUM”Claire Fuller’s acrobatic new novel, about a family who has failed each other, inverts our expectations of narrative time to an astonishing effect: our experience of grasping for truth about those who have left is just as pained and urgent as her characters’. Fuller’s sentences are condensed maps of the human process, unfolding in patterns we immediately recognize.” ― Kathleen Alcott, author of INFINITE HOME”Swimming Lessons hovers in the electric space between secrets and connection, between the desire to love and urge to hide. This is a biting, soaring novel.” ― Ramona Ausubel, author of SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY”Eloquent, harrowing, raw . . . sure to keep readers inching off their seats.” ― Kirkus”Saving the best for last with revelations and surprises, Fuller’s well-crafted, intricate tale captures the strengths and shortcomings of ordinary people to show how healing is possible by confronting the darkest places.” ― Library Journal, Starred Review”Like Fuller’s stunning debut, Swimming Lessons is a story suffused with the poignancy of miscommunication between people who love each other, of the things we can never really know.” ― The Guardian”This would be a perfect book club pick, as it’s a short novel that says a lot, and there’s plenty to unpack.” ― Book Riot”Fuller has written a profound portrait of marriage, motherhood, and loss. It is a beautiful, devastating book.” ― Powell’s Pick of the Month”Claire Fuller’s newest book is a kind of love letter to the complicated relationships that are part of the real world rather than the romantic fiction we build in our minds.” ― Read It Forward”In Swimming Lessons, Fuller explores the all too familiar pull of duty, expectation, and guilt between a family in emotional turmoil with an unsentimental eye, recalling some of the best work of the late, great Richard Yates. Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, was nothing short of brilliant and I’m here to tell you that she has officially avoided a sophomore slump with this gem of a book.” ― Javier Ramirez, The Book Table”Claire Fuller is a master of the psychological mystery. In her most recent novel, Swimming Lessons, no one is running around with a gun and no physical violence occurs. And yet damage happens. Families are cut to the bone. And lingering wounds are left festering into adulthood. . . . It’s a deliciously written story within a story that isn’t over until the last page has been turned.” ― Pam Cady, University Book Store”With Swimming Lessons, Claire Fuller confirms her place as a writer of exceptional insight and warmth. This tale of a marriage, of a family, and especially of children bearing the brunt of the fallout of betrayals and abandonment, pulls you in and refuses to let you emerge from the lives of its characters until the tale is finally told. Even then it takes time to shake the spell the book creates.” ― Anmiryam Budner, Main Point Books”Claire Fuller’s Swimming Lessons is a beautifully told literary mystery that weaves together the lives and loves of people defined by deceit and a questionable disappearance. ” ― Joanne Berg, Mystery to Me”I loved it and was caught up in it so thoroughly that it was my companion during every meal I ate until I finished the book. I have also never felt so inclined to leave marginalia in a book as I did after reading Swimming Lessons.” ― Katie Orphan, The Last Bookstore” I could not put Swimming Lessons down and read it in one sitting! It lingered in my thoughts long after I finished. Marvelous! A must read!” ― Stephanie Crowe, Page and Palette Bookstore

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I purchased “Swimming Lessons”, by Claire Fuller, after reading (and loving) “Bitter Orange” a few years ago, and am just now getting around to it (my “To Be Read” stack is daunting).Ingrid and Gil are the two main characters around whom the mysteries swirl. Neither are at all likable – if you need that in a novel (I don’t). Basically it’s a mash-up of two fairly familiar plots: the first being the “disappeared mother” plot. Did Ingrid leave her husband and two daughters to live a life without them, or did she accidentally drown, or did she commit suicide?The second plot is the “handsome older English (it’s always English, isn’t it?) Professor and writer, seduces his young student (half his age) plot.”I enjoyed “Swimming Lessons” and was never bored by it. But “Bitter Orange” is a much better book.

⭐ This book is proof that craft is not enough to make a literary book worth reading. There is no question Ms. Fuller’s prose is seamless and her descriptions apt. But her characters are unlikable and the plot dead on arrival. I’m surprised I stuck with it. Perhaps I was hoping for some redemption or uplift that never came. I feel sad that this book didn’t have the same material woven in a way that would have made a difference to the reader. The woman protagonist was twice damned by her professor husband. First as a writing student, and then as a writer, whose work ultimately went up in smoke. Yet one feels the writer isn’t really sympathetic to her. She does show sympathy to the damaged daughters, but frankly, it isn’t enough. What I learned from this reading experience is content is as important as form.

⭐ From the author of the award-winning and word-of-mouth sensation Our Endless Numbered Days comes an exhilarating literary mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final page. Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan. Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage.My Thoughts: The alternating narratives in Swimming Lessons truly captivated me. One narrator was Ingrid, wife and mother, who has written a plethora of letters to her husband Gil, whom she addresses as “you” in these missives. She is finally having a conversation with him, one which he cannot ignore or dismiss. She is venting about their troubled marriage and the ways in which her life was a disappointment. There are, however, some brighter moments in her letters…mostly about their lives before she had to give up her dreams. Her dreams of an education and her own writing career. The education which she was unable to complete because of the university’s rules regarding married/pregnant students.Ingrid’s letters were written in 1992, just before she seemingly drowned (or disappeared). She speaks mostly of their lives in the 1970s…but also touches on the later years.Third person narrators included Gil and Flora. We see Nan from Flora’s perspective, and I didn’t like her very much, probably because she tends to dismiss Flora’s thoughts and ideas, and treats her like a young child. Nan apparently took on the mother’s role after she was gone. Later on, we see a kinder version of her.Gil seemed like a very selfish man, but since his present day situation shows him troubled and ill, I did feel some sympathy for him.I loved the descriptions of the book lined rooms and hallways. Stacks of books, sometimes two or three deep, surrounded them all. The fact that Ingrid’s letters were placed in the books in a somewhat planned fashion added to the intrigue of the story.Would Gil find the letters? Would he finally understand what his wife had been trying to say all those years? Would there be answers to their questions? What stunning events happened to bring the story to a riveting conclusion? And who is the mysterious woman who keeps showing up in Hadleigh? A 5 star read.

⭐ Too general, story not specific enough. Difficult to care at all for the characters as author didn’t give you enough information about them. While the subject matter is very relevant, this authors take on it is ambivalent. Our book club did not enjoy this selection. I prefer a good storyline in any format. This book could still be primarily letters but they could hold more clues to the characters lives.

⭐ – I was taken in by the story, the changing time frames, the characters. The husband was totally selfish. His 20 year younger wife documented their difficult relationship in letters to him that she hid in old books in his personal library. He was a famous writer – famous based mostly on one book to which she unknowingly contributed a great deal. He traveled. She stayed home with two children although that wasn’t the life she had envisioned for herself. Interesting, interrelated characters. She finally leaves him and her whereabouts are unknown. Some think she is no longer alive. Themes of marriage, family, friendships, aspirations, and infidelity. Have fun putting together clues after you get to the end.

⭐ Claire Fuller writes a family tale, her voice full of deep emotion, reality, yet rich with lyrical poetry, artistic descriptions, surreal imaginings. Set at the sea, a mother, strong swimmer, disappears leaving two children. The father, her husband, left long ago, infidelity and writing. The book begins as the adult children gather at the seaside home where their father is dying. Stories are remembered, visions experienced. The mother’s letters over her years are shared with us readers. Fantastic story, beautifully written, never to be forgotten.

⭐ I am trying to finish this book so I can go on to something more interesting. I had read the reviews so I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought this book. It is awful. Slow, no character development, story confusing at times. My mind wanders. I have about 40% more of the book to read, but this is definitely not one I’m looking forward to finishing. FYI….her second book, Our Endless Numbered Days, was great. Highly recommend that one.

⭐ My bookclub chose this one. I wanted to like jt but felt that it was formulaic; drunk philandering writer; sad family; characters not fully developed. Seemed a little like “Italian Shies” but not as good. I just felt so fat the writer tried too hard; poetic language just didn’t work for me.

⭐ It’s rare that I don’t finish a book, especially after I’ve read half-way through. But I just couldn’t do it. Every time I went to pick it up, I was not looking forward to reading it. The story line meandered all over the place and I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. It was just boring to me. I skimmed through the second half just to get the gist of the ending, and I’m very glad I didn’t give any more of my time to it. Just not the book for me, unfortunately.

⭐ I started this book and could hardly stay focused. I Skip ahead to the end and then to the middle and finally got a clear picture of the story. Sad, and boring .I’m still hoping that Ingrid is alive and well somewhere.

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