Swimming Home

                                ‘She was not a poet. She was a poem.’ – Joe Jacobs

When I went to pick up this book from the library I struggled to understand why any book would be so vaguely categorised as Adult Fiction. After reading Levy’s novel it’s clear that her novel is uncategorizable with the drama between the Jacobs family, the thriller created by the character of Kitty Finch and each characters need for self help taking in the novel to a number of interesting directions.

Levy’s first novel after a 12 year hiatus takes place over a week in Alpes-Maritimes, France when the Jacobs family along with friends Mitchell and Laura have their holiday interrupted by Kitty Finch who came to have ‘the arsehole poet’, Joe Jacobs read her poem.

 The compact nature of the book does well to show how quickly and easily people’s lives can change the problem is it leaves many things unexplained. Levy may’ve done this intentionally to leave an air of mystery around the story but it leaves me unsatisfied.  To my own fault I somewhat rushed through the book as its size made me feel that it lacked depth but that certainly isn’t the case. Reading both the first and last chapters again I know that there were key details that were lost on me at first. This is a testament to Levy as a writer as she is able to create powerful yet compact stories. Yet, even though the concluding chapter takes place in seventeen years after the initial story it doesn’t answer any of the questions created by the story but presents almost a new focalised storyline which I would love to see developed further but still didn’t contribute to the story in focus.

Levy adds to the air of mystery in the novel by not revealing Kitty Finch’s poem in its entirety which causes Kitty to remain as an enigma throughout the novel. This is emphasised by each character having different opinions of Kitty with Nina being immediately fascinated by her cool and confident attitude to Madeline Sheridan who has a explosive history with Kitty. This makes her impact throughout the novel all the more shocking because I never knew what to expect from her.

Something that Levy has done before in ‘Hot Milk’ (but technically not before but after since I’ve read the books the wrong way round) is to take the typical holiday destinations and make them into a home of self discovery. This could be expected as for many a holiday is for liberation from their mundane lives and all of her characters to experience some sort of freedom such as Nina getting her period.

In conclusion, this is definitely a book that I enjoyed on a surface level and would want to read again to discover the hidden depths that I have yet to uncover.