I loved this book so much that after reading it, and returning it to the library, I wanted to buy my own copy. I wanted this book to sit on my shelf, right behind my desk, even if I never read it again, though I know I will.
The Swimmers is a book that swallowed me up into a world, which at first, I didn’t quite understand. Yet, I didn’t care. I would have gone anywhere that the author was taking me. The language carried me along, the voice touched me deeply, and finally, as the story became clear, broke my heart into a million pieces.
Just when I think there can be no new, original way to tell a story, I turn around and look at my copy of The Swimmers.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic
Up above there are wildfires, smog alerts, epic droughts, paper jams, teachers' strikes, insurrections, revolutions, record-breaking summers of unendurable heat, but down below, at the pool, it is always a comfortable eighty-one degrees ...
Alice is one of a group of obsessed recreational swimmers for whom their local swimming pool has become the centre of their lives - a place of unexpected kinship, freedom, and ritual. Until one day a crack appears beneath its surface ...
As cracks also begin to appear in Alice's memory, her husband and daughter…
Here’s is a book book I took out of the library, read, and then had to buy so that it could sit behind me on the shelf.
It is hard to describe Lucy’s voice. Deceptively simple, understated, so deeply personal and reflective that it is hard to believe this book is not a memoir. Lucy’s voice, her experiences, and her emotions blended directly into my mind and into my heart, and stayed with me for days after, as if I had lived them myself.
I fell so deeply in love with Lucy that I quickly read all the other Lucy Barton books in the series and, of course, bought them all.
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 AND THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016. A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.
An exquisite story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge
Lucy is recovering from an operation in a New York hospital when she wakes to find her estranged mother sitting by her bed. They have not seen one another in years. As they talk Lucy finds herself recalling her troubled rural childhood and how it was she eventually arrived in the big city, got married and had children. But this unexpected visit leaves her…
I have always been a fan of stories that jump between timelines and alternating voices. I love to "work" a little when I read a book.
Signal Fires does this in bold and unique ways. It never feels like a trick, or that the author is keeping something from me. There is a central tragic event which Shapiro reveals right up front. The story continues on to show us the many ways in which the lives of the characters are profoundly shaped, whether directly connected to the incident or not.
There is also a compelling plot, cleverly woven into the several different POVs, that kept me turning the pages. Again, not a trick or gimmick just great writing. And this book was a gift. So I didn't even have to buy it!
A heart-stopping, magical story about human connection, for fans of THE PAPER PALACE and LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE
Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever.
When retired doctor Ben Wilf comes across ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman in the middle of the night under Division Street's old oak tree, he is treated to an unexpected and magical tour of the stars. But this is not the first time the boy and old man have met. In fact, they go way back, to the night of Waldo's birth, and further still.
Secrets preside over the neighbourhood along with the majestic oak.…
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