Swimming Home - by Deborah Levy (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in Great Britain by And Other Stories in 2011"--T.p. verso.

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

"Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain?

A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.

Review Quotes

"Swimming Home is unlike anything but itself . . . . Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." --Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

"Elegant . . . subtle . . . uncanny . . . The seductive pleasure of Levy's prose stems from its layered brilliance . . . [Swimming Home is] witty right up until it's unbearably sad." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Here is an excellent story, told with the subtlety and menacing tension of a veteran playwright." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Exquisite . . . Levy's sense of dramatic form, as she hastens us toward the grim finale, is unerring, and her precise, dispassionate prose effortlessly summons people and landscapes." --The New Yorker

"Ms. Levy is a stealthy storyteller, lulling us while busy scattering clues." --Susannah Meadows, The New York Times

"Wholly new, fresh and, yes, profound . . . [Swimming Home] floats like a wasp, and stings like one too." --Tucker Shaw, The Denver Post

About the Author

Deborah Levy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, widely broadcast on the BBC, and translated into fourteen languages. Her works include the novels Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl; the story collection Black Vodka; and the non-fiction Living Autobiography Trilogy: Things I Don't Want to Know, Cost of Living, and Real Estate. She lives in London.