Swimming Lessons

This was a hard one to rate (which should maybe tell me that rating books isn’t always super significant) but in the end I realised that this story will be one of the ones I’ll keep thinking about and back on. In a nutshell, it’s about a family (father and two daughters) dealing with the grief of loosing their wife/mother. Alongside that the reader gets a glimpse into the past and the relationship between Gil (father) and Ingrid (mother). As I feel like this story is most impactful when read with as little information about it as possible I’m trying not to spoil anything while still hopefully getting my point across why I loved reading it. These are the aspects I enjoyed most throughout the book: Claire Fuller’s style of writing is very much up my alley. It’s calm and still eerie somehow - which is perfect for the type of story and lives she follows. Which leads me to the flawed and lovable characters of this book. We get to meet a frail old man who’s filled with regret and hope (until the very end in my opinion). We then get acquainted with Flora, quirky, full of life and hopes, who’s the younger of the two daughters which shapes her and her views just as much as being the older one does to Nan. And ultimately, we get to know Ingrid through letters and memories, and a few more “minor” characters. Seeing how all of them interacted with each other and getting to be a part of their lives, which was all but glamorous or perfect, made me reflect so much about our time here on earth and what we do with it. I get that you can read this book in many ways, and every reader takes something else from it, but to me it symbolises life in its raw form and how situations, circumstances, expectations and decisions make it the way it is. It’s just a joy to read about characters that live, make mistakes, do things right and experience different things, and how they deal with them and expect others to deal with them. This is exactly what I personally mean when I say I love the concept of show don’t tell. Claire Fuller for sure knows how to write like that. I don’t think it’s a book for everyone (but which book is, right? ) but if you like following (seemingly) mundane lives and grapple with less than perfect characters then this could be for you. I’d go as far as to say that if you enjoy Claire Keegan’s books you might also like this one - maybe it’s the name that does it