Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Published by Bloomsbury USA on September 14, 2012 

"Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely." So says Kitty Finch, the central character in Swimming Home, a powerful, offbeat novel that explores the impact an intruding outsider has on the relationships of two couples who are sharing a vacation home in the Alps-Maritimes. Whether any of the vacationers will get home safely becomes the novel's burning question.

Philandering London poet Joe Jacobs (formally known as Jozef Nowogrodski), together with his wife Isabel (a war correspondent) and daughter Nina, are spending the summer of 1994 with Laura and Mitchell, the owners of a failing shop in Euston. The friends are enjoying the sun when they see a naked woman floating in the pool. The swimmer, Kitty French, isn't exactly stalking Joe Jacobs, but it's no coincidence that she's appeared at the villa. Isabel soon asks Kitty to stay on as a guest, a decision that surprises everyone else. Also vexed by Kitty's arrival is a neighbor, Dr. Madeleine Sheridan, who has an unhappy history with Kitty. Madeleine believes "human beings had to suffer real hardships before agreeing to lose their minds" and can find no excuse for Kitty's aberrant behavior.

Kitty clearly has mental health issues. She spends much of her time naked, she's off her antidepressants, and she was once institutionalized and subjected to shock treatments. Kitty seems determined to have Joe read a poem she has written ("Swimming Home"), which she describes as a conversation with Joe and no one else. Believing she has a psychic connection with Joe (she calls it a "nerve contact"), she wants to save Joe from his thoughts, while Joe wants to save himself from Kitty's poetry (and from her depression because, according to Joe, poems written by the depressed always constitute a threat). The text of Kitty's poem is not shared with the reader but its key content is revealed after Nina (perhaps the most well-adjusted of the book's characters) sneaks a peek at it.

Puzzling out the intriguing relationships between the characters is both difficult and rewarding. Why does Isabel (as Madeleine observes) all but push Kitty into Joe's arms? Why is Joe so hesitant to discuss Kitty's poem with her? Why does Madeleine need to be needed by Isabel? Why does Isabel stay with Joe? How does Joe really feel about Kitty? Can Kitty save Joe from his thoughts? Why is Nina so disturbed by what she sees under Joe's bed? Sometimes Deborah Levy answers the questions, sometimes she offers hints, sometimes she leaves the reader to speculate. Yet Levy plays fair; this is a tightly woven novel, not a collection of loose threads. With a bit of thought, every question can be answered to the reader's satisfaction.

Laura and Mitchell turn out to be minor characters but Kitty, Joe, Isabel, and Nina are developed in rich detail. Despite the novel's brevity, we come to know other minor characters well (including cantankerous Madeleine and a character we never meet, the owner of the vacation home).

Although the story's harshness is softened with moments of wit and quirky humor, readers who search for likable characters and happy endings will want to bypass Swimming Home. The characters are coping (or not) with pain in ways that make them disagreeably self-absorbed. Many readers will nonetheless find, as I did, that the intensity of the characters' interactions, the lyricism of the prose, and the profound questions that Levy explores make Swimming Home a captivating read.

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