The Girl in a Swing

by Richard Adams

A shy young man meets a beautiful woman in the company of a young girl. He finds himself swept off of his feet and married to her, bringing her with him to live in his family home. She is his erotic dream come true; she does everything she can to bind him to her and join him in his comfortable life.

Soon, however, odd things begin to happen. Things in the house are strangely damp with what looks like seawater, bodies appear under the water that aren't really there. It all winds up to a horrifying conclusion.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Ghosts, Supernatural

396 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Adams was born in Newbury, Berkshire. From 1933 until 1938 he was educated at Bradfield College. In 1938 he went up to Worcester College, Oxford to read Modern History. On 3 September 1939 Neville Chamberlain announced that the United Kingdom was at war with Germany. In 1940 Adams joined the British Army, in which he served until 1946. He received a class B discharge enabling him to return to Worcester to continue his studies for a further two years (1946-48). He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1948 and of Master of Arts in 1953.

He was a senior civil servant who worked as an Assistant Secretary for the Department of Agriculture, later part of the Department of the Environment, from 1948 to 1974. Since 1974, following publication of his second novel, Shardik, he has been a full-time author.

He originally began telling the story of Watership Down to his two daughters, Juliet and Rosamund, and they insisted he publish it as a book. It took two years to write and was rejected by thirteen publishers. When Watership Down was finally published, it sold over a million copies in record time in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Watership Down has become a modern classic and won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1972. To date, Adams' best-known work has sold over 50 million copies world-wide, earning him more than all his other books put together.

As of 1982, he was President of the RSPCA.

He also contested the 1983 general election, standing as an Independent Conservative in the Spelthorne constituency on a platform of opposition to fox hunting.

Reviews

[Bren fall in love with the sea. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Only your image trembles in my heart".

Richard Adams-Girl in a swing


I love that quote. This book has become a part of my heart. Oh my. I can confidently say once read, this is a book one will never forget reading.

I do not want to say to much. I do not think one should know to much when going in. This is a compelling and utterly bewitching book.

Richard Adams, who also wrote "Watership Down" created a masterpiece with "The Girl in a swing".


Alan is a shy awkward young man. He has a passion for Ceramics. He also has some Psychic ability. Alan has never been in love.

Alan is a character whom the reader will instantly love. He could be your best friend, so down to earth and free of pretense he is. And even though he has never loved deeply, he is in his own way happy.

Then he meets Cathe. Cathe is as different from Alan as one can possibly be. She is beautiful, mysterious and the personification of just about everything Alan has ever wanted. He falls hard and he falls deep.

He cannot believe she may feel the same way about him. He quickly asks her to marry him and when she says yes, Alan feels complete.

It would not be in the reader's interest to know anymore going in. This is NOT a love story in the conventional sense. If I had to categorize it, I would call it a Gothic Mystery that also contains many Super Natural elements, a character study and yes, somewhat of a love story.

Suffice to say, this book touched me deeply and and quickly landed on my favorites list. Actually I read it long ago, before Goodreads even existed. What a book! This is one I have reread many a time.

The writing here is incredible. The book is ethereal and shrouded in mystery while the prose beguiles the reader. I had never read anything remotely like it the first time I read this. I still haven't.

The whole book is unforgettable. It is told in a way that is utterly enthralling and before I say anymore more and spoil my own review I just have to ask the reader to give this one a chance.

[``Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little gem fits so many different descriptions besides fiction while exhibiting all the qualities of Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance, Horror, British Lit., ranking right up there with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre when it comes to gothic romance.

Boy meets girl and both fall madly in love. There's one little problem though, before the heroine can move from Scandinavia to marry her new English love, she must do something about her young daughter.
But the heroine is so madly in love she will do ANYTHING to be with her beloved. Her 'anything' is troubling though, not only to the reader but to the lovers in this book as well.

This book will absolutely horrify you so proceed with caution :D

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see why my younger self was enamored of this book. It has a mysterious thread that runs through it, an other-worldly element, and a hedonistic sexuality, all of which was probably more appealing to a girl in her twenties than a woman in her…well, never mind about that.

I did enjoy this the second time around, mainly because I had forgotten virtually all of the story except the part pertaining to the eponymous girl of the title. She is a porcelain figure, and my mother happened to have a girl of the same description sitting on a shelf in her house for as long as I could remember. After reading the book, I begged the girl from my mother, put her on my own bookshelf, and the girl and the book have not been separated since.

I have not changed the 4-star rating, even though I believe I was not as swept away this go. The story is quite good and still Richard Adams' best effort, I think, even though I have also enjoyed both Watership Down and The Plague Dogs.

In The Girl in a Swing, our narrator, Alan Desland, is a dealer in antique porcelain and ceramics. On a buying trip to Copenhagen he meets the lovely Kathe Wasserman, and falls immediately and hopelessly in love. Kathe is very mysterious and evasive, and the reader senses right away that there is something not quite right, but Alan, in his state of moonstruck adoration, does not, or at least refuses to admit that he does.

After a slow start, in which we are given some essential background that comes into play later in the book, the pace quickens and the real story begins to unfold. By the end, you feel the opposite of that slow start; you feel instead that you have been careening down a mountain road, at an ungodly speed, toward a cliff that overhangs a dark sea. There are some intense religious discussions regarding forgiveness that I found very interesting, and some sexual exploits that I found tiring.

I am not in love with the book, the way I was when I was younger–my suspension of disbelief powers are not what they used to be–but I am still glad that I revisited it, if for no other reason than to remind myself of who I was when I would have been begging all my friends to read this one.

[Feliks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel of the supernatural is among the very few modern horror novels I've ever read which follows the classical format: in that the author unleashes a full, powerful, walloping, knockout-punch of crazy, disturbing horror only at the very end of the story. Its extremely singular in this regard. You rarely see this done, nowadays.

What makes this different from anything found in Koontz, Saul, Straub, King, Barker, or McCammon? It is that this 'restraint' makes it much more of a genuine novel from the start. Adams is a fluid storyteller. So, there are many passages which are innocuous; simple, pleasant, sweet. It has a very tender thread of romance between the protagonist and the strange blonde Dutch girl he meets. There are no 'stock' or 'prop' menacing characters nor any "spooky settings" (haunted mansions, etc). Nope. The story takes place mostly in the sunny English seaside.

There are a few disturbing notes, of course --but they are so lightly touched on that you don't realize what their arrangement portends until it is too late, and the trap set for you is sprung. As I say, it happens at the very end of the tale. This is an adult novel, 'Girl in a Swing'. It is all about anticipation. Until the final chapter, Adams holds you gently in the palm of his hand. He does not 'pander' to the simplistic or over-eager horror-seekers who make Stephen King so popular.

Such 'stooping' and 'lowering the bar' is something that plagues most works of contemporary horror; of course. Current-day authors scramble to place their characters in jeopardy immediately --from the first few pages--so as not to 'lose the attention' of either their adolescent or 'beach-chair' readers. They shrink (above all else) from having their works labeled, "slow to take off". Similar trends occur in major motion pictures these days, as you must know.

But Richard Adams does not succumb to all this insecurity. He's better than that. He's the man who gave us 'Watership Down' and 'Maia'. Here, you almost don't know you are reading a horror novel. You don't know you're in danger. He starts out writing a straightforward contemporary-romantic-narrative. There's only a *very* faint, puzzling twinge of 'something not right' which appears every once in a while; as you pore your way through the pages. Its all very heavily character-based. It's relationship-centric. There are no screeches, nor bumps, nor booms, nor whistles, nor bells. Nothing 'overt'. No 'jolts'.

Thus--towards the end of the story--you are completely unprepared for this massive, ominous, fearsome, black, onrushing wave of destiny headed your way. I won't say anything further so as not to spoil it, but look out. You will be tromped on, by what Adams has in store. You will want to run screaming from the room. You will bury your face in the seat cushions, and squeeze your eyes shut to make it stop. It is ferocious. The shock will stay with you a long, long, time afterwards. AaaaaaAAAAaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a sad and odd sort of ghost story and really it never actually made sense to me on several levels. I don't want to put in spoilers but the 2 people involved do things that lead to tragedy but the actions themselves don't make sense within themselves. I suppose it can be looked at as 2 selfish people who set it all in motion, but still there are gaping holes in the story, the plot...the internal logic.

It does have it's own sort of terror, and that feeling of inevitable doom. I won't say it's bad or a waste of time. It's not a bad read, try it yourself and see what you think.

My attention was recently drawn back to this book and my review. This is a book I read some years ago because some friends (who all liked it) "aimed it at me". I think I'll add a note under a spoiler tag to clarify what I said.

MAJOR SPOILER BELOW:

The book is one of almost profound romance. The two people involved seem to be unbelievably in love. Alan has a compulsive need for a neat and tidy life. He makes a comment about not caring for children. Based on this the love of his life murders her child. (this is of course simplified but it's basically what happens.)

I've never been able to wrap my head around that. This is a crucial plot point. The impending doom that pervades the book and curses character's love story depends on it. The horror found in the book springs from it.

The two people who are supposed to be so totally in love never seem to intuit anything about each the other...or they block it out. K.'s search for redemption feels hopeless and in the end we get the doom we've seen coming.

For me from the act of murdering one's own child to the blindness about each other the plot just seems full of holes. It's not that I don't see Alan's culpability nor K.'s responsibility. It just didn't ring true.

That said, I gave it 3 because it is very well written, very readable and still holds the interest completely. I did read it through and it did provoke the thoughts that you see the result of here.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[9/10]

In that instant the room, which I had known all my life, became strange to me. The furniture and other things about us no longer seemed familiar. This was not my home, but an unknown place of dread, dark as a forest, alien and minatory; a place where, as for a wild animal, to move freely or make any noise was to expose oneself to mortal danger.

I made two excellent choices for my spooky Oktober Fest this year. [the other one is ‘The Ghost and Mrs. Muir’] Adams’ story is insightful, atmospheric and deeply disturbing. He takes his time building up the psychological pressure and the character profile (starting with Alan’s childhood actually), but it’s well worth taking your time with the novel, considering the quality of the prose and the subtlety of the argument, informed by numerous literary references and poetry quotations.

I was already a fan of mr. Adams storytelling before this, but I would like to revisit this high esteem I have for him: I believe the best writers have more than one story in them. They do not simply re-apply the successful formula that got them noticed in the first place, but challenge themselves to explore new territories, new modes of expression. Consider John Williams, who only wrote three major novels, each in a different style and each considered a masterpiece on its own merits [Augustus, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner]. Richard Adams has a similarly thin output, but he is also successfully experimenting with form and subject: ‘Watership Down’ is about rabbits, but it speaks loudly of his love for the natural world and about social interactions in an uninhibited way. ‘Shardik’ is a fantasy novel, with a sequel named ‘Maia’, that explores myths and violence and religion. ‘The Plague Dogs’ is about his love for animals and a harsh satire of medical experiments. It is also about friendship and adventure. Then we come to this little known gem that on its face is a standard haunted house thriller, but surprises us with the depth of the psychological study and the elegance of its phrasing, the cleverness of its tension-building and the passion for the subject that shines throughout the story. Some signature touches of Adams point towards his most cherished themes: the location in his native Berkshire with vivid descriptions of the landscape, of the creatures living there and of the history of the place; the liberating spiritual force of physical love and the power of myth / religion to define or to anchor our view of the world.

>>><<<>>><<<

I didn’t expect I would have enough material to write a lengthy review of this, so I initially planned a gross simplification:

A later-day, cold-blooded Victorian meets a pagan Goddess, somewhere between the idyllic downs of Berkshire and the cold shores of Copenhagen. Steamy scenes follow as Kathe awakens Alan to the joys of sex, but old nightmares lurk in dark corners to haunt their nights together.

There’s a lot of subtext here that is worth getting into. Before we even meet the alluring and mysterious Kathe, we proceed to listen to the life story of Alan Desmond, told in a long flashback, backwards from a scene of him haunting the home where she once swung naked in the courtyard’s balansoire.



I know, now, that in some ways I must have seemed – in fact I was – rather staid and old-fashioned. For a start, an unreflecting, orthodox Christian (how square!); fastidiously detached; even, perhaps, a shade precious – though I could always get on with people and never lacked for friends. But things – beautiful things – were so much easier and more dependable than people; consistent, predictable and on that account satisfying. Porcelain was a simplification, a refinement of fallible, often-disappointing reality.

Alan was a shy, introverted boy, whose self-confidence was subverted early on by cruel kids calling him ugly. Later in school, Alan prefers bird photography, swimming and solitary nature walks to team sports or rowdy nights. A good mind and a serious mindset got Alan through Oxford, but upon graduation he shies once again from the world and goes to work in his father’s porcelain shop in Newbury. Among these inanimate yet beautiful objet d’art, Alan finds the spiritual satisfaction he no longer expects from human interactions.

How excellent was Providence in conferring upon us the necessity to eat and drink, or else we would have no need for plates, pots, cups and cans. Glazes and enamelling showed forth our superiority to the beasts more validly than music, for many creatures seem sensitive to the pleasure of vocal sound, and to find in it joy and satisfaction beyond the mere need to communicate or to assert themselves; whereas we alone decorate.

Of Alan’s early development, two incidents stand out in retrospect: his bullying by his peers, cause of his disillusion with social life, and an experiment in paranormal activity from one of his Oxford teachers.

The beautiful, I think, often remain unaware of their wealth, sweeter than honey in the honeycomb, taking for granted the smooth lawns, tapestry meadows and shimmering woods in which they are privileged to wander with their own kind; idly supposing, when they give it a thought, that all but the deformed, perhaps, are equally free to roam there to any extent they please. To be in no least doubt about one’s physical attractiveness – that must be strange – as strange as being an Esquimau.

I love this last quote in particular for its relevance to our present celebrity-crazed, beauty-oriented society and as a showcase for the prose in the novel – informed and elegant. Alan concludes his musings and justifies his decision to observe life from the sidelines with an well-chosen reference to Melville:

Like Mr Bartleby, I preferred not to.

A very good use of foreshadowing, after the dark opening sequence, is the key scene describing the seance experiment Alan Desmond does in his teacher’s house, coupled with early stirrings of sexual arousal towards the teacher’s wife. This creates expectations of dread and misfortune for later developments.

‘I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of this,’ he said, ‘but one school of thought has it that there are people with a kind of extra-sensory perception – or at any rate, some sort of hitherto-unexplained faculty – which tends to come out more strongly in connection with anything sinister or lethal – anything evil, if you like.’

Another quote, this time from Milton, underlines the dark inner core of the story:

‘And in Ausonian land, Men called him Mulciber.’

After all this extensive set-up about the personality of Alan Desmond and about his passion for ceramics and porcelain, the reader is more than ready to meet Kathe in Copenhagen, where Alan goes on business. She is so beautiful, it takes one’s breath away, yet she guards her secrets fiercely from prying questions. L’eternelle feminin, or the presence of the Goddess in New Age terminology, bowls over poor Alan from his first glimpse of Kathe:

Silently, some never-before-experienced lens had slid into place and I, with eyes as it were blinking uncertainly in brilliant light, was looking through it at a reality which I had never before been able to penetrate. [...]
Pathetically, I found myself thinking of Groucho Marx – “I’m a man and you’re a woman. I can’t think of a better arrangement.”

While Alan takes refuge in more flippant literary and movie references, his whole life is turned upside-down and anything not related to Kathe becomes irrelevant. This middle section of the novel is probably my favorite, as this lightning strike of a romantic story sees Alan convince Kathe to move to England and marry him without knowing anything about her past. The major upheaval of his worldview is compounded by Kathe’s secretive insistence that they do not marry in a church and that he must not ask questions about her past. Kathe vows to prove her love in other ways, which she proceeds to demonstrate fully during their rushed honeymoon in Florida.

I recall an old man, a friend of our family, once telling me that what he remembers most vividly about the 1914-1918 war was the frightening realization, upon reaching the front, that here all lifelong assumptions – the safety and predicability one had always taken for granted and come to rely upon – did not apply. Continuous danger and uncertainty altered the very eyes through which one saw the world and affected everything one thought and did.

Marital bliss is tinged from the start for Alan by sinister and unexplained incidents that cast an early shadow of doubt on the true nature of Kathe. What is indisputable is Alan’s conviction that she is a true Goddess, the embodiment of womanhood and worth any price he will have to pay in order to be with her.

The great area of life dominated by Aphrodite – the area of sexual passion – is very similar [to the war analogy from earlier]; or so it has often seemed to me. What is it like? It is like a deep wood at night, through which virtually everyone has to pass; everyone, that is, who lives to grow up.

In between quotes from Goethe and Heine that they recite to each other, Kathe and Alan return to England, to the shocked stares of his mother and sister, who nevertheless very soon also fall under the spell of Kathe’s beauty and outgoing nature. Alan installs her in the family mansion, and even co-opts her in the business, where Kathe is decided to help him succeed. A unique statuette of a girl in a swing is discovered by Kathe by accident at a jumble sale. It was made in one the first porcelain shops in England and only three copies are known to exists. The figure may make their fortune, but it also represents a symbol of their love: a mystery to be solved and a thing of undeniable beauty and rarity.

An ocean, she called it; and I – I set out on that water, passed long days upon it, learned its moods, watched the sky, caught the tide. Like a mariner I was its slave but also its master; for unless I sailed upon it, it had no meaning and no use. Yet as with the sea, to seek to dominate or command it would have been folly.

It is almost a given, especially in Victorian literature, that women are moody and unpredictable, driven by emotion rather than rationality. Most of the time, Kathe is very practical, intelligent and articulate, able to hold pertinent conversations not only on technicalities about pottery, but also about Christianity and sexual life, with Alan’s friend Tony.

People live in bodies, you know. They can’t feel kind and merciful if they’re not loving properly with their bodies. They’ve got nothing to give away then. It’s lovers who can afford to feel generous.

While she remains deliberately and obstinately vague about her past, Kathe is determined to demonstrate her love for Alan and to make the marrriage work. Under prompting from pastor Tony, she lets some clues slip into the conversation:

‘I just want to hide myself here for ever, and be safe and happy.’
‘Hide? What from?’ asked Tony.
‘Oh, things that frighten me. It’s dark outside, isn’t it? I’m afraid of the dark.’

It is at night then, when things in the Desmond house get creepier and creepier, reminding the reader indirectly about the paranormal sensitivity Alan manifested at Oxford. His premonitions of doom and his waking nightmares come with increased frequency, exacerbated in an almost perverse way by the happy news that Kathe may be pregnant.

If this was hallucination, it was frightening less in itself than because of what it meant that apparently I could not distinguish between what was real and what was not. It was the middle of the night and I was alone in the house.

The last part of the novel fully justifies the inclusion of the novel among the horror shelves of the libraries and bookstores, and I will try to say as little as possible about it, since I managed to spoil things for myself by reading the wiki article on the novel.

Two observations are still needed, I think: first, that the author walked a fine line between his support of extrasensory theories and his interest in a realistic, naturalist narrative. Even the religious angle is similarly presented in a modern, balanced and nuanced argument with Tony and others.

‘So even here, there’s a rational explanation.’
‘There’s always that.’

Secondly, the gothic beauty of the text shines in particular in the final pages, touching on the subject of the Goddess and on the significance of the title, on the role of the artist to transcend pain and discover beauty.

... a desolate temple, whose doors hung sagging, where dried dung littered the cracked and broken paving and dead leaves, blown on the wind, pattered against the scrawled walls. I shut my eyes.

Kathe, flesh and dancing spirit, sits in the swing, exquisite as porcelain, secretly smiling to see that I alone perceive her swinging between the huge, serrated leaves, from earth to sky and back again. Porcelain and pottery – they are my mystery. The world exists in order that we may create from it their excellence; and so that I – I myself – can communicate to others that beauty which else they might never see. [...]
Somehow, my grief and loss are to enrich the world.

[Rosina Lippi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Girl in a Swing is absolutely nothing like Watership Down, no talking animals at all. Instead this is a story about love and obsession and ghosts, and it’s really spectacular. The main character is a young man from a stable family who has taken over his father’s fine china business in a small town in England. He has the slightest bit of extrasensory perception, which shows itself only rarely in his boyhood and young adulthood.

Traveling on business to Scandinavia, he meets a beautiful woman and falls in love. She is bright and funny and evocative, and she brings him out of his shell. She’s also secretive in ways that are vaguely alluring and disturbing both. In a matter of weeks it’s decided that they will marry. She will quit her secretarial job and join him in England. They marry in the spring, and the rest of the novel takes place over the summer.

This was a truly frightening and sad story, and it’s also a very well written one. There are several layers of things going on at any one time. I had read the book three times before I felt I had caught most of the subtle interwoven connections.

I recommend this book very highly, unless you really can’t stand to be frightened. There is no gore, you see no violence — anything like that happens well off-stage and is only approached from an angle, after the fact.

Oh and: this is one of the few novels set in contemporary England where I felt … I suppose the word is, at home. It felt real to me, as real as my husband’s home town and his friends and the extended family, in the way people talk to each other (and don’t). Also, I blame this book for a minor obsession with the history of fine china and porcelain. And if you’re wondering who the girl in the swing is — that’s an excellent question. I have thought about it alot, and I’m still not sure.

[Bhavani Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book deeply disturbing. It is a book of two parts. It is a romantic story for the first 300 pages or so, charming without being completely compelling. There are just enough odd occurances in this first part to keep you interested and engaged, guessing where the author was going with this, and thinking you had a good inkling. Adams' prose is always elegant, and thus you remain content as the story chugs along. And then he hurls a sledgehammer at you in the last 75 pages, jolting you out of your sedate progress. It is not really frightening, although there are one or two scary bits. But the denouement is so disturbing that I was literally shaking at the end of it! A book that will stay with you for a long time, but in a way that will give you a shiver whenever you think of it. But mostly defintely worthy of a read.

[Sarah Mac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned circa 30%, because I just don’t care.

I’ve tried twice before to get into this, & both times I failed to get beyond the first chapter. Since I enjoyed Adams’ epic fantasy MAIA, I thought my previous fails must’ve been sheer moodiness, so this time I pushed onward…but nope. Alan’s narration is unspeakably dull, & when he’s not scaling epic heights of uninteresting ceramic-related factoids, he’s busy being a stuck-up ass. He goes on & on about how he doesn’t care for other people, but quite honestly I can see why nobody wants to hang with him—his superiority complex & superficiality disguised by babbling references to Greek theatre & ceramic manufacturing are a huge turnoff. We’ve all met this sort before—the super-nerd for ____, where you groan internally each time he or she sits at your table because you KNOW all he/she can talk about is their fascination with ____, but nobody else is remotely interested in said topic. You just sit there, nibbling your sandwich or sipping your coffee, surreptitiously checking your watch or phone to see how soon you can escape.

…That’s what Alan’s narration is like. It’s also full of “tally-ho, good chap!” mid-century Britishisms, & I wanted to punch him in the face after 10 pages. Uber-slang is cute when Bertie Wooster does it; Alan just comes off as a pretentious, overly educated snob.

1 star for sheer dullness. Maybe it gets better after the first third…but I won’t be there to see it. A 300-some page (supposed) erotic supernatural novel shouldn’t take that long to get to the meat & potatoes.

[Suzanne Thackston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheer brilliance. One of my favorite books ever written. Poignant, dark, erotic without ever being gross, and incredibly creepy, this taps into a primordial theme, something that underlies the most enduring myths.

[Karl]

This hardcover is copy 40 of 100 copies signed numbered and slipcased, signed by

Richard Adams
Travis Lewis
Reggie Oliver

[Maria Elmvang · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hardly know how to describe this book. It started out very slowly, and I was wondering if I'd have the patience to work my way through it, but suddenly it captured me completely, and I read the last 200 pages in one sitting.

It is so very, very different from Watership Down that it's almost hard to believe it was written by the same author. Instead of being a social commentary, The Girl in a Swing touches upon the supernatural while tying it up to Christian theology.

I'd been warned that the book was depressing, but I actually didn't find it so. It was sad to be sure, and both troubling and disturbing, but I'm obviously no good at figuring out clues, so it took me almost to the very end, to figure out what the secret was - and suddenly, a lot of the earlier theological debates made sense.

A lot of the book takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I have to admit to being tickled pink by all the references to places I know, and even all the Danish words being thrown in there - that's very rare to see.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars on reread--I really liked it. This review is vague and unhelpful!

I first read this book when I was way too young--probably 13. But it's because of this book that I bought a porcelain horse on my first trip to Germany!

The narrator of this book is white, English, male, and Christian, with all that entails. He's smug, pretentious, and unrelenting in his attitude of superiority. But it's because of his limited viewpoint (something he casually says to Karin) that the horrific events of the book are set in motion. If he'd had an ounce of compassion, perhaps tragedy could have been avoided.

Kathe (well, now she's called Karin) is not really a character so much as a prototype manic-pixie-dreamgirl. The narrator doesn't even see her as human (literally)--though again, if he had, perhaps she wouldn't have been driven to her monstrous act. It's hard to understand or judge her actions since we know absolutely nothing about her--except the narrator's judgments.

This book is melodramatic. Definitely overwrought. The horror elements are minor and delayed. And the real mystery is why Karin fell so deeply in love with a doughy, uptight Englishman! Still, it remains one of my favorite ghost stories. I love the literary and pagan references.

[Cassandra Glissadevil · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.7 stars.
Serious horror hounds should nab a copy of The Girl in a Swing. Snatches of a witch woman, terror tale haunt this beautiful novel. Pummeled by a ceramic fist, my eyes swallowed resplendent, Venusian descriptions of fine china, weeds, and flowers. Pure poetry. You'll want to read it aloud.

Socially awkward English man brings back a wife back from mainland Europe, Copenhagen. She's gorgeous, she's different, she's erotic, she's...supernatural. Together, groom and bride run the fine china shop...for a while. Fans of Tanith Lee should latch on to The Girl, because of the hallucinatory, abstract, scary, foggy feel.

I don't know if there's a connection, but I wonder if Adam's named his novel after the Rococo era painting "The Swing", painted by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Adams gorgeous prose certainly match the awesome magic of Fragonard's painting.

Welcome addition to any serious pretty prose or horror collection.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Adams is 'hit or miss' with me. 'Maia', for instance, seemed almost smutty when compared to the whimsical beauty of 'Watership Downs', though the imagery was equally stunning and the characters intriguing. I read it in its entirety but had a bad taste in my mouth at the end. However, this book has stayed w/ me unlike any book I've read in a long while. I just can't describe it, neither will I try to give an adequate synopsis. Suffice it to say that it is a psychological thriller that disguises itself as a proper love story. The characters seem so comfortably plain, so subtle, that it makes the horrific conclusion of this story all the more disturbing. I am still left in a quandary as to how much of what we have 'seen' was real, or whether we are even supposed to take it at face value. Though it's billed as an 'erotic thriller', I really don't remember the eroticism as much as I do the creepier moments. Either way, it's an unsettling story that I don't think I'd read again but that I feel is worthy of attention.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd novel, in places beautiful, in others plodding. Among other things, it is a love story between reserved, self-effacing English porcelain expert Alan and East German expatriate secretary Käthe, whom he meets on business in Copenhagen. Neither are accustomed to thinking of or expecting love or tenderness, and both are endearingly vulnerable. What begins as an enchanting little romance that sweeps them both off their feet soon evolves into spiritual connection, a whirlwind marriage, and mutually delightful erotic discovery. But even though their entire story takes place over a mere six weeks, soon their lovemaking interludes become tedious in repetition - a development I find quite sad, because with a little more care, and perhaps a little less spelling-it-out, Adams could have captured the joy of the honeymoon with all the luminous wonder he lavished on their falling in love. Meanwhile Alan's parapsychological abilities, established somewhat perplexingly in the beginning of the story, lend themselves to a mounting mood of, if not exactly horror, at very least of something profoundly, disturbingly amiss - but like Alan, the reader too experiences a nagging sense of "What am I missing? What do I not see happening? What clues am I not putting together?" A single moment of foreshadowing during a prenuptial conversation between Käthe and Alan stands out like a sore thumb - and yet even then, neither Alan nor the reader quite catches on. Adams develops his numinous ghost-story element to be, by the end, as solid as an anvil, and the realization of who the ghost IS becomes a heartbreaking indictment of the narrow expectations both "eligible young men" and "polite society" hold regarding "marriageable women". This element of social criticism may seem dated or at least heavy-handed 33 years after publication, but it will ring true of the past at least to those who recall a time when any familial encumbrance was seen as a grave impediment to a young woman's social or marital aspirations.

[Steph · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book had great potential it did not live up to it. It was way too verbose. It took over 300 pages to tell a story that could have been done in 200. As for ghost story, it should have never been given that label.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ghost story with a lot of sex. Creepy as hell.

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got quite far into the novel but I could not finish it. I've enjoyed Richard Adams works before but this one felt more like a weird dream, made little sense and I had problems taking something significant out of it. I thought it was going to be more romantic and erotic/sensual kind of story but it made no sense. There where parts of this that really put me out of the story and what made me take the book down for good was a "sex" scene that seemed far from consensual but was brushed away far to lightly for my liking. I couldn't feel a connection between the couple and I'm not quite sure what I actually read to be honest and I really tried to get into it. Wouldn't recommend this book as the first one to pick up by Richard Adams

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written. Sensuous. Textured. That aspect was 4.5 stars, at least.

But in the length, progression, and especially the redundant reinforcements of the narrator "eyes", his character and his detachments, almost prissiness, to life in general? That was just too, too for my taste.

And then there is the instant wife! I was entirely with Tony on this one. If that scenario had been one with my best and rare friend, I would have gotten FAR more specific with him too.

Others seem to think that their time together was of such romance, sexuality, core joy perceptions etc. that it was "worth" it. Magic couple, whirlwind mania etc.

I'm pretty sure I am in the minority on this love story- in appreciation of its sweep and cadence supreme for sure I am in the minority. Yes, there is something fatalistic about it from the get go to the finale. But it's not either entirely loving or is it mind/thought/cognition on the same planes between the two partners. And that made it nearly "icky" to me. Of course it was full of lies, and not only the "big" one, either. Mostly on her end.

It's a 5 star expose on 10 star looks woman "power"- I'd guess. That as well. But it also holds quite uneven speed / tempo. Sometimes it just plods. Other key periods- it almost seems to skip. I'm not a fan. It did not increase the tension for me. Or the paranormal "feel" either. Just made it more sad. And it IS sad.

This was written in another era of general guidelines and norms of morality to family, sex, community of wider sense than exists now.

BUT, in some ways it could not be more contemporary. Because "me, first" is eternally and entirely the same kind of rationalizations that have taken wider berths to women's choices today. Also centering on their offspring and others very lives. Cruelty reigns. "I have no pity"- spoken in many various languages. So exactly accurate. No pity. None.

Others will like this book much more than I. The fine china and porcelain prose is 5 stars. It's exquisite. So is much of the philosophical conversations, wiles of theory etc. Especially upon her pagan sexuality factor as needing to be "installed" into religious belief and its scriptures. Especially organized forms of Christian dogma or the teachings of those formal religious entities. That entire portion was quite a window. She would have been a good, no, a great Viking. Not a Christian in any sense. But could she conflate the two!

I'm glad I read it. It lost an entire star in its length. Too much of him, too much of her- for me. His Mother- I would have liked MORE. She must have had ESP to have left them for their length of marriage. And it lost another star in the ending. Obscure and just barely believable. Melodrama over the top. It seemed to belong more to 1910 than 1950 something.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might know of Richard Adams as the author of Watership Down, the classic tale "about bunnies." Well, this is as far away as you can get from that novel. A blurb in the front cover from the New York Times Book Review calls it a story of "beautiful, haunting erotic love and an absolutely terrifying ghost story." It's not erotica--I'd call it more sensuous than erotic and the sex is rarely in any way explicit and certainly never in a pornographic way. What strikes me most is the gorgeousness of the prose, the lyricism. The first hundred pages or so is particularly slow-paced. The protagonist and first person narrator paints a picture of himself as prosaic, undersexed and unattractive in those first hundred pages, and only the beauty of the prose keeps the story from dullness. Alan Desland is an English ceramics dealer, whose passion is reserved for porcelain and pottery--until he meets Kathe in Copenhagen. She's an exquisitely beautiful woman--her almost supernatural beauty is often stressed in the tale, as a gift and a burden--and a sign and perhaps the reason for an intense and pitiless quality in her--like those of the greek goddesses she's compared to in the first pages--Demeter or Hera. Or even more appropriately, as she's compared to in the end, the Hindu goddess Kali. Almost to the end this reads as a romance, except for foreshadowing and periods punctuated by eerie happenings--the inexplicable sobbing of a child, the sound of water. This would have made the perfect Hitchcock film really. This is a haunting and underrated novel worth seeking out.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard book to review, as my feelings are so mixed. The story concerns an uptight Englishman and dealer in ceramics, Alan Desland, who falls in love with a mysterious, beautiful German woman, Kathe. Within a week he has proposed to her and she follows him to England. She seems to be the perfect wife, except that she is haunted, literally and figuratively, by a terrible secret.

The book was very well-written and kept my interest despite the fact that it is extremely slow-paced. Ultimately, though, I simply wasn't convinced by the central premise that Kathe, an apparently decent and mentally balanced woman, would kill her own daughter in order to stay with a man she had only known for one week. This is so improbable to me that I can't honestly say that I "liked" the book. On the other hand, it will probably stay with me for a while. I woke up this morning with P.J. Harvey's song "Down by the Water" in my head--it could be the theme song for this novel.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping, twisting, erotic horror novel. Fascinating character development, even though questions remain at the end of the book. An unpredictable story (at least for me). This is a departure from most of what people know of Richard Adams' work.

It's like a tapestry of horror/supernatural themes, wound around an erotic love story, the history of ceramics, and the headlong journey of two star-crossed lovers.

[Jonathan Hutchins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This completely blew me away. I read it in bed, in one sitting, until about 3 a.m., in my rented room at the top of a rambling mansion in Sussex, in about 1984. I've never read it since, and don't need to. For me, head and shoulders above his other laborious fictions. This is the real thing. To be compared with Fowles' "The Magus": because based, covertly, on experience.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. Found myself thinking about it again after reading Sarah Waters' wonderful haunted house novel "The Little Stranger." The plots are different in a number of ways, but they do have common threads that I can't say more about without spoilers.

The hero is a shy, sexually naive young man who falls in love just about at first sight with a beautiful German woman whom he meets on a business trip abroad. The courtship lasts about five days before they're engaged to be married, but there's something distinctly odd about that courtship. She will never let him escort her home; she always says goodbye at a bus stop. She won't tell him anything about herself, her life, her family or her background. And she won't marry him in a church. Besides puzzling the heck out of our hero, who is a devout believer as well as coming from a small town where people gossip about such things, this makes distinct problems in planning the wedding, since she has to establish legal residency before they can have a civil ceremony. So they solve the problem by eloping to the U.S., where all you need is a blood test and a three day waiting period. The honeymoon gets off to a rocky start, but after a scary experience that helps bond their relationship, they're off and running with a sexual marathon that would exhaust all but the most passionate newlyweds. Then they come home to England, and strange things start happening. And for our hero, the worst part is that deep down in the part of his subconscious that he won't listen to, he knows why, and what it's all about. We'll figure it out too, eventually, by the final chapters, and by then we're as terrified as he is. If you want to know the rest, as we used to say in grade school book reports, "read the book and find out."

[Andrew Cartmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the detail about ceramics in the story is absolutely fascinating, but what immediately hooked me is that the protagonist Alan Desland has a gift for ESP which surfaces unpredictably and randomly through his life. Such paranormal sequences give an eerie undertow to the story and promise harrowing things to come.

The Girl in a Swing is addictively readable. Those descriptions of the ceramics trade and Alan's early psychic experiences set the scene for the turning point when he visits Copenhagen and meets the stunning, mysterious Karin Forster.

The love story is tremendously effective. But Karin is way out of Alan's league, so when she agrees to instantly abandon her life in Copehnahgen and come back to England to marry him, we fear the worst.

Soon the honeymoon is over in more ways than one, and the book proceeds with its agenda of building supernatural horror and revealing its dark secrets.

The Girl in a Swing is genuinely disturbing, and it really packs a punch.

It turns out there's a lot more to Richard Adams than rabbits...

[Susie Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by a friend, but sadly it was not one for me. On the positive side, I found the character of Desland sympathetic, enjoyed the author's very visual writing style, and was intrigued by the love affair for quite a long way into the book.

But there was constant question in the back of my mind as to why such a beautiful and desirable woman as Käthe would fall in love with introverted, awkward and by his own admission unattractive Desland. It just didn't ring true. And the whole marriage thing in America, what was that about?

The belief that something dramatic would happen eventually just managed to keep my interest through what I found to be a rather long drawn out tale. Although I thought the ending was clever, and very graphic, ultimately I didn't find it satisfying.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this. The female lead is a capricious, princess-y type that I do my best to avoid in real life, and certainly don't want to read a novel about. Otherwise it's a yawner about a very prim guy who collects ceramics and... well, that's about it. At well over a hundred pages, I had yet to come across anything "haunting" or "erotic", so I put it down. Definitely no Shardik!

[Tom Doss iii · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some ways the book has been sadly underrated by readers and critics alike. It has the subtlety of Waugh and the quality readability of Watership Down. As a bonus, the reader may gain an obsession of collecting English pottery.

If the reader has even the slightest appreciation of ghost stories, I cannot recommend this story enough.

[Jukka]

The Girl in a Swing - Richard Adams

I was describing to my sister an event early in this book (the school experiment) and she said, "that's like Steven King". [Not implying that Adams is copying, he's an original.] She's right -- i'd not thought of it, but that's one way to descibe how this book is different from some of his other books. That and that this book is not about rabbits, dogs, horses, or cats.

But there's no mistaking Adams -- the strong geographic base and wandering in real terrain, the flawless voicing and personal reasoning of his characters, and his consideration of moral questions based in plot and situation.

Adams follows his own design, and creates compelling characters and story. This would be good if read and discuss by a book club, or by a couple. Also big plus here if you understand German. Most of the time a book that has another language it's French or Spanish, it's nice to find one with a good amount of German (mit Dichtung).

I definitely would recommend this wierdly wonderful book.

Characters: Alan, Käthe (Karin in later editions), Tony, Flick and Angela, Diedre, Mrs Taswell, Mother.


Later: Perhaps you've experienced this too, after some time when a book has settled in your mind, you get reminded of other books you've read, that have some connection. For whatever reason, i've been thinking about Lilith by J.R. Salamanca which i read years ago and got creeped out by.