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Caroline's Bikini: A Novel
'Alright' I said, 'I'll try...' This is how Emily Stuart opens her intricate tale of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline's Bikini : a swirling cocktail of infatuation, obsession, and imagination. The moment that Emily's friend Evan Gordonstone - a successful middle-aged financier - meets Caroline Beresford - a glamorous former horsewoman, and now housewife, hostess, and landlady - there is a 'PING!' At least, that's how Evan describes it to Emily when he persuades her to record his the story of falling into unrequited love, which is as old as Western literature itself. Thus begins a hypnotic series of conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West London's bars, fuelled in intensity by endless G&Ts and Q&As. From the depths of mid-winter to July's hot swelter, Emily's narration of Evan's passion for Caroline will take him to the brink of his own destruction. Written in a voice so playful, so charismatic, and so thoughtfully aware of the responsibilities of fiction it can only be by Kirsty Gunn, Caroline's Bikini is a swooning portrait of courtly love - in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!
- GenresFiction
352 pages, Hardcover
First published June 19, 2018
About the author
Kirsty Gunn
38 books57 followersKirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand and educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and at Oxford, where she completed an M.Phil. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist.
Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).
She is also author of This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Her latest books are The Boy and the Sea (2006), winner of the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award; and 44 Things (2007), a book of personal reflections over the course of one year.
Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).
She is also author of This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Her latest books are The Boy and the Sea (2006), winner of the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award; and 44 Things (2007), a book of personal reflections over the course of one year.
Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
July 12, 2018
The subtitle of Kirsty Gunn’s newest book Caroline’s Bikini reads: An Arrangement of a Novel with an Introduction and Some Further Material. With those words, Gunn breaks the fourth wall from the get-go, casting her novel onto a metafictional level that is to amuse, and bewilder, the reader throughout the text. The “novel” is accompanied by copious footnotes which often refer to “Some Further Material” at the back of the book, a section of some seventy pages, where Gunn (or the “editor” of the book) dissects the novel thoroughly, from its narrative techniques to its themes, characters, and locations. Therefore, to give a general idea of what Caroline’s Bikini is about, let me quote what the “editor” says of it under the section titled “Literary Background and Context”:
Caroline’s Bikini is a novel about unrequited love that seeks to establish itself in the tradition of extended imaginative pieces of text – poetry or prose – that in themselves are an attempt to create an artefact or ‘thing’ that may stand in for the love object. If the love may not be possessed, then, says the tradition, we have this piece of work to stand for it. The piece of work is real – we can touch it, read it, respond to it – and it has a physicality that the missing object of desire does not. The beloved may not be possessed, but her story can be, and a text created from it, that can be held and kept and returned to.
Subtly following the tradition of Petrarch and Dante, Caroline’s Bikini tells the unsuccessful love story of Evan Gordonston. Having worked as a banker in New York for decades, he returns to London and lodges at the house of Caroline and David Beresford in Richmond, West London. Evan is infatuated by Caroline, yet fails to initiate any sort of a romance with her. The novel is narrated by Emily, a childhood friend of his, “a freelance reviewer and copywriter” with whom Evan shares countless gins at various pubs around West London. Almost everything in the novel happens in these pubs, where Evan and Emily work together to structure the story of Evan’s love for Caroline. Evan tries to articulate his feelings to Emily, who, as a more literary person, is to turn it into a novel. Fascinated by John Milton and his daughters who dictated for their father the poet, Emily assumes the role of an “amanuensis” and tries to make sense of Evan’s love in order to create a good narrative. Yet, nothing even nearly remarkable comes out of it, and the whole process turns into a sort of a Waiting for Caroline (my coinage): after hundreds of pages, we barely have a scene to tell about Evan and Caroline together. Evan’s physical condition decreases as his mindless love for Caroline increases; Emily is more and more frustrated with the Beckettian project that is going nowhere: “the fact that nothing much was happening by way of plot was an issue still.” There is only the looming presence of an idealized Caroline, permeating everything:
Caroline stayed. She was there, just the same, in all the fullness, reality, of her self and name. Caroline. Throughout all the words, all the paragraphs, all the sentences, she was just . . . present. In the midst. You know those lines by Petrarch writes? ‘So I, alas, my lady, sometimes roam,/seeking in other faces you alone,/some semblance of the one true form . . .’? Well, that just about sums it up, what Evan was doing.
Yet, nothing happens except the passing of time, the changing of seasons:
Months had passed since our story had begun. This essay of ours, these pages of words. A long time, the changes of season charted in sections or chapters, I hadn’t decided yet how they would be arranged, yet now here we were stuck, is how it felt, like a machine gets stuck mid-action, and can’t sort itself, can’t click into gear to start up its whirring and turning again but only spins, over and over, brokenly and pathetically in the same place.
The reader of Gunn’s novel might share Emily’s irritation, as Caroline’s Bikini never really goes anywhere, if you don’t count the hilarious last scene. But that is the point, even if it requires some patience from the reader: the point is the stasis, the mindlessness of courtly love in a 21st-century context. The gradual fall of Evan is farcical to follow, as he moves from suits to sweatpants while declaring his love for an unattainable woman. Caroline’s Bikini is, indeed, subtle, and one of the weirdest and most experimental novels I have come across all year. Emily herself doubts the project’s nature as a novel throughout the, well, novel by Gunn: sometimes it’s considered an essay, sometimes an intervention, a project, a story… This year’s Goldsmiths Prize has a strong contender right here.
There are many ways to approach Gunn’s text. For example, you could skip to the end of the book to read the analytical non-fiction bits about Caroline’s Bikini without ever spoiling the plot. However, I like to consider it a novel that is read from the beginning to the end in the order it is presented, which was a functional choice too: “Some Further Material” is surprisingly fascinating to read even after the main story is finished. It is as plotless as the body text, but addictive for any reader who, like me, finds pleasure in perusing, dissecting, and analyzing literary texts. Caroline’s Bikini is a metatextual whirlwind that is bound to annoy some readers and delight those who don’t mind postmodern tricks in their books.
Written for the Helsinki Book Review.
Caroline’s Bikini is a novel about unrequited love that seeks to establish itself in the tradition of extended imaginative pieces of text – poetry or prose – that in themselves are an attempt to create an artefact or ‘thing’ that may stand in for the love object. If the love may not be possessed, then, says the tradition, we have this piece of work to stand for it. The piece of work is real – we can touch it, read it, respond to it – and it has a physicality that the missing object of desire does not. The beloved may not be possessed, but her story can be, and a text created from it, that can be held and kept and returned to.
Subtly following the tradition of Petrarch and Dante, Caroline’s Bikini tells the unsuccessful love story of Evan Gordonston. Having worked as a banker in New York for decades, he returns to London and lodges at the house of Caroline and David Beresford in Richmond, West London. Evan is infatuated by Caroline, yet fails to initiate any sort of a romance with her. The novel is narrated by Emily, a childhood friend of his, “a freelance reviewer and copywriter” with whom Evan shares countless gins at various pubs around West London. Almost everything in the novel happens in these pubs, where Evan and Emily work together to structure the story of Evan’s love for Caroline. Evan tries to articulate his feelings to Emily, who, as a more literary person, is to turn it into a novel. Fascinated by John Milton and his daughters who dictated for their father the poet, Emily assumes the role of an “amanuensis” and tries to make sense of Evan’s love in order to create a good narrative. Yet, nothing even nearly remarkable comes out of it, and the whole process turns into a sort of a Waiting for Caroline (my coinage): after hundreds of pages, we barely have a scene to tell about Evan and Caroline together. Evan’s physical condition decreases as his mindless love for Caroline increases; Emily is more and more frustrated with the Beckettian project that is going nowhere: “the fact that nothing much was happening by way of plot was an issue still.” There is only the looming presence of an idealized Caroline, permeating everything:
Caroline stayed. She was there, just the same, in all the fullness, reality, of her self and name. Caroline. Throughout all the words, all the paragraphs, all the sentences, she was just . . . present. In the midst. You know those lines by Petrarch writes? ‘So I, alas, my lady, sometimes roam,/seeking in other faces you alone,/some semblance of the one true form . . .’? Well, that just about sums it up, what Evan was doing.
Yet, nothing happens except the passing of time, the changing of seasons:
Months had passed since our story had begun. This essay of ours, these pages of words. A long time, the changes of season charted in sections or chapters, I hadn’t decided yet how they would be arranged, yet now here we were stuck, is how it felt, like a machine gets stuck mid-action, and can’t sort itself, can’t click into gear to start up its whirring and turning again but only spins, over and over, brokenly and pathetically in the same place.
The reader of Gunn’s novel might share Emily’s irritation, as Caroline’s Bikini never really goes anywhere, if you don’t count the hilarious last scene. But that is the point, even if it requires some patience from the reader: the point is the stasis, the mindlessness of courtly love in a 21st-century context. The gradual fall of Evan is farcical to follow, as he moves from suits to sweatpants while declaring his love for an unattainable woman. Caroline’s Bikini is, indeed, subtle, and one of the weirdest and most experimental novels I have come across all year. Emily herself doubts the project’s nature as a novel throughout the, well, novel by Gunn: sometimes it’s considered an essay, sometimes an intervention, a project, a story… This year’s Goldsmiths Prize has a strong contender right here.
There are many ways to approach Gunn’s text. For example, you could skip to the end of the book to read the analytical non-fiction bits about Caroline’s Bikini without ever spoiling the plot. However, I like to consider it a novel that is read from the beginning to the end in the order it is presented, which was a functional choice too: “Some Further Material” is surprisingly fascinating to read even after the main story is finished. It is as plotless as the body text, but addictive for any reader who, like me, finds pleasure in perusing, dissecting, and analyzing literary texts. Caroline’s Bikini is a metatextual whirlwind that is bound to annoy some readers and delight those who don’t mind postmodern tricks in their books.
Written for the Helsinki Book Review.
December 27, 2018
All concept and no substance. Some of the prose is quite lovely, but mostly just irritating. Rambly posh people nonsense. Am I missing something?
August 1, 2018
Caroline’s Bikini is a ‘novel’ about unrequited love in a unique literary form, perfect for hot and seemingly endless summer days by the poolside. Or as Kirsty Gunn puts it ‘An arrangement of a novel with an introduction and some further material.
Confusing as it may be, Caroline’s Bikini is mainly about Evan Gordonston and Emily ‘Nin’ Stuart. Evan recently moved back to London after having lived in the United States for years. He becomes a lodger at the Beresford family where he hopelessly falls in love with Caroline Beresford. This forms the start of a new project he undertakes together with his childhood friend Emily. They start writing about Evan’s love for Caroline, with Emily functioning as amanuensis.
Now the book can be seen as split into two parts where the first deals with the ‘actual plot’ and the latter with the further material. I loved the presence of Emily in the ‘actual plot’ because it would have been rather dreadful without her, and I absolutely loved reading about her efforts to ‘work on’ the story as beautifully described in the quote below.
“ And from this minuscule gesture, I could generate a charge, enact in those seconds the components of a great love story in the context of a grand literary tradition if I was lucky, according to Evan, in the large sunlit kitchen of the Beresfords’ house at the end of the District Line.”
The further material is quite extensive and certainly part of the book as a novel. You can find further information about the characters, their families, friends and colleagues, as well as literary background information, and even a list of the various Gin’s Emily and Evan drink during their various meetings. If you would like to have a matching drink to go with your book I would certainly recommend having a peek at this section before you start. Totally legitimate for really ‘getting in the book’ you know...
Now, my personal experience with this book was brilliant. I slowly read my way through Caroline’s Bikini and it became one of my favourite books that I have read so far this year. That being said I do not have a degree in Literature, and I do not think that is required to understand or enjoy this book. Perhaps there is not much action happening, but actually, that makes it rather perfect for the reader to just unwind and take in the words. What I thought was really admirable, was that after reading the first part of the book I still felt a bit like ‘oh was that all’, whilst after I finished the further materials as well, I was satisfied and felt that I had got to know the characters intimately.
The last thing I want to say is that the conclusion to Evan’s (unrequited) love story was totally weird but so hilarious.
To conclude, I rated this book with 5 out of 5 stars. I received a review copy of this book from Faber & Faber in exchange for an honest review.
Confusing as it may be, Caroline’s Bikini is mainly about Evan Gordonston and Emily ‘Nin’ Stuart. Evan recently moved back to London after having lived in the United States for years. He becomes a lodger at the Beresford family where he hopelessly falls in love with Caroline Beresford. This forms the start of a new project he undertakes together with his childhood friend Emily. They start writing about Evan’s love for Caroline, with Emily functioning as amanuensis.
Now the book can be seen as split into two parts where the first deals with the ‘actual plot’ and the latter with the further material. I loved the presence of Emily in the ‘actual plot’ because it would have been rather dreadful without her, and I absolutely loved reading about her efforts to ‘work on’ the story as beautifully described in the quote below.
“ And from this minuscule gesture, I could generate a charge, enact in those seconds the components of a great love story in the context of a grand literary tradition if I was lucky, according to Evan, in the large sunlit kitchen of the Beresfords’ house at the end of the District Line.”
The further material is quite extensive and certainly part of the book as a novel. You can find further information about the characters, their families, friends and colleagues, as well as literary background information, and even a list of the various Gin’s Emily and Evan drink during their various meetings. If you would like to have a matching drink to go with your book I would certainly recommend having a peek at this section before you start. Totally legitimate for really ‘getting in the book’ you know...
Now, my personal experience with this book was brilliant. I slowly read my way through Caroline’s Bikini and it became one of my favourite books that I have read so far this year. That being said I do not have a degree in Literature, and I do not think that is required to understand or enjoy this book. Perhaps there is not much action happening, but actually, that makes it rather perfect for the reader to just unwind and take in the words. What I thought was really admirable, was that after reading the first part of the book I still felt a bit like ‘oh was that all’, whilst after I finished the further materials as well, I was satisfied and felt that I had got to know the characters intimately.
The last thing I want to say is that the conclusion to Evan’s (unrequited) love story was totally weird but so hilarious.
To conclude, I rated this book with 5 out of 5 stars. I received a review copy of this book from Faber & Faber in exchange for an honest review.
November 9, 2018
Well look at the average rating of this book, says it all really. Some while ago I read The Big Music and didn't like it; the addenda and footnotes tiresome. Caroline's Bikini is even worse and it irritates me that Ms Gunn makes comparisons with her work and the Divine Comedy. Towards the end of this spectacular literary non-event I noted some of the comments made by the author narrator that stuck me as apposite:
"..this latest insertion only proved once again how we barely had a story here.." p208
"Nothing was happening at all"
"I was fed up" Both p211
"Are we to go through all this kind of thing again?"p226
Questions and observations that had been running through my mind long before I had reached page 200.
In summary, and Ms Gunn and her publishers need to take note, the most repetitive, boring literary nonentity in my 60 years of reading. What were they both thinking of when they embarked on this project?
"..this latest insertion only proved once again how we barely had a story here.." p208
"Nothing was happening at all"
"I was fed up" Both p211
"Are we to go through all this kind of thing again?"p226
Questions and observations that had been running through my mind long before I had reached page 200.
In summary, and Ms Gunn and her publishers need to take note, the most repetitive, boring literary nonentity in my 60 years of reading. What were they both thinking of when they embarked on this project?
July 10, 2018
I didn’t really enjoy this. But those who have English Literature degrees might. A novel about writing novels, about theatrical precedents, structure, form, content. It didn’t really make it as a novel for me.
August 6, 2018
If you are a writer then you will probably spend a good proportion of your time alone, engaged in the process of writing, often living life in your own imagination. As a result, writers often write about writing, or have writers as characters in their books. And we the readers seem to love this. As if writing is a glamourous pastime to be admired or even aspired to.
Kirsty Gunn’s new book is a book written about writing a book. There are only three main protagonists. Emily Stuart has been asked by an old friend, Ewan Gordonston, to help him tell the story of his love for Caroline Beresford. Evan has returned to London after many years living in the USA. Relocated to some high flying finance job in the London office, he needs somewhere to live. Someone suggests lodging in the home of Caroline Beresford, with her three teenage sons and often absent husband David. Evan pays a visit and BANG (as he describes it). As he watches the tall, elegant Caroline in T-shirt and wrap-around skirt walking down the corridor, tying her long blonde hair into a loose pony-tail, smelling the sweet scent of orange that trails around her, Evan is smitten. He is in love. So he calls on Emily to help him write the story. To tell all in this modern day love story. Evan and Emily meet in a series of London pubs to drink gin and tonic and write the story. Evan provides notes and Emily embellishments.
And that is it. There is virtually nothing else to the story. All we have is the telling of it. I’m a big fan of Kirsty Gunn. I loved her short stories in the collection ‘Infidelities’ and the description of her Katherine Mansfield project while living at Randell Cottage in Thorndon. But here I was disappointed, mainly by the lack of plot and action. Too much was similar, repetition, going back over, looking back at what we had already heard. There were frustrating elements like footnotes that dogged what felt like almost every page in the first two sections. The asterisks that denoted a footnote were so small that they were easily missed, caught up amongst other punctuation. If you saw there was a footnote, you were distracted by looking for the asterisk, or if you arrived at the bottom of the page without noticing the footnote first, then you had to scan back over the page looking for the position in order to see it in context. And then of course we come to what is called ‘Some Other Material’. More than sixty pages of notes and detail about what sits behind the narrative. Some of this was fascinating, and had more going on than the book itself.
I wasn’t expecting a thriller. I knew this was going to be a tale of a ‘classic love affair’, but I did want more to happen. That is not to say that there was nothing to like. As Emily and Evan develop their story together, they meet in a series of appropriately named pubs to drink increasingly unusual types of gin and tonic. From the simple Gordons and Bombay Sapphire to strange herbal infusions and tonic flavours to be stirred with rosemary stems. I loved the way that the names and atmosphere of the pubs would come to represent the moods of the two collaborators. From The Cork and Bottle and The Gin Whistle, to The Grapes of Wrath and The Pincushion, to The Last Stand and finally the grim corridor-like establishment, The Empty Barrel, that seemed to lurk under the Hammersmith Flyover. I thought I would have to scan back through the book for all those names, but instead found them all listed in one of the sections of ‘Some Other Material’, after ‘Narrative Construction’ and ‘Linguistic Variations’.
I decided to leave the Other Material until the end, and not follow the trail of footnotes back and forth. I’m glad that I did, as some hints of the outcome of the story had crept into these pages. Sometimes I wondered if the Other Material would be there at all, or if it might be some sort of trick, but they were real and often interesting, with explanations of courtly love in Dante and Petrarch and more detail about an ‘amanuensis’, a person that takes dictation, as Emily does for Evan and as Milton’s sisters did with Paradise Lost.
I just wanted this to be more fun than it turned out to be.
Kirsty Gunn’s new book is a book written about writing a book. There are only three main protagonists. Emily Stuart has been asked by an old friend, Ewan Gordonston, to help him tell the story of his love for Caroline Beresford. Evan has returned to London after many years living in the USA. Relocated to some high flying finance job in the London office, he needs somewhere to live. Someone suggests lodging in the home of Caroline Beresford, with her three teenage sons and often absent husband David. Evan pays a visit and BANG (as he describes it). As he watches the tall, elegant Caroline in T-shirt and wrap-around skirt walking down the corridor, tying her long blonde hair into a loose pony-tail, smelling the sweet scent of orange that trails around her, Evan is smitten. He is in love. So he calls on Emily to help him write the story. To tell all in this modern day love story. Evan and Emily meet in a series of London pubs to drink gin and tonic and write the story. Evan provides notes and Emily embellishments.
And that is it. There is virtually nothing else to the story. All we have is the telling of it. I’m a big fan of Kirsty Gunn. I loved her short stories in the collection ‘Infidelities’ and the description of her Katherine Mansfield project while living at Randell Cottage in Thorndon. But here I was disappointed, mainly by the lack of plot and action. Too much was similar, repetition, going back over, looking back at what we had already heard. There were frustrating elements like footnotes that dogged what felt like almost every page in the first two sections. The asterisks that denoted a footnote were so small that they were easily missed, caught up amongst other punctuation. If you saw there was a footnote, you were distracted by looking for the asterisk, or if you arrived at the bottom of the page without noticing the footnote first, then you had to scan back over the page looking for the position in order to see it in context. And then of course we come to what is called ‘Some Other Material’. More than sixty pages of notes and detail about what sits behind the narrative. Some of this was fascinating, and had more going on than the book itself.
I wasn’t expecting a thriller. I knew this was going to be a tale of a ‘classic love affair’, but I did want more to happen. That is not to say that there was nothing to like. As Emily and Evan develop their story together, they meet in a series of appropriately named pubs to drink increasingly unusual types of gin and tonic. From the simple Gordons and Bombay Sapphire to strange herbal infusions and tonic flavours to be stirred with rosemary stems. I loved the way that the names and atmosphere of the pubs would come to represent the moods of the two collaborators. From The Cork and Bottle and The Gin Whistle, to The Grapes of Wrath and The Pincushion, to The Last Stand and finally the grim corridor-like establishment, The Empty Barrel, that seemed to lurk under the Hammersmith Flyover. I thought I would have to scan back through the book for all those names, but instead found them all listed in one of the sections of ‘Some Other Material’, after ‘Narrative Construction’ and ‘Linguistic Variations’.
I decided to leave the Other Material until the end, and not follow the trail of footnotes back and forth. I’m glad that I did, as some hints of the outcome of the story had crept into these pages. Sometimes I wondered if the Other Material would be there at all, or if it might be some sort of trick, but they were real and often interesting, with explanations of courtly love in Dante and Petrarch and more detail about an ‘amanuensis’, a person that takes dictation, as Emily does for Evan and as Milton’s sisters did with Paradise Lost.
I just wanted this to be more fun than it turned out to be.
June 21, 2022
I don’t get it. Maybe I’m thick but I feel like I could tell you the whole story in one sentence. A lot of backwards and forwards I was waiting for the story to get started which actually happened about 3 pages from the end. Then the ending was another let down. Don’t understand the positive reviews I read beforehand or the quotes that have been printed on the book. Will not be looking for others by Kirsty Gunn.
Read
September 23, 2024If pep belive that days can make affir of love true
and make sun grow in that kitshin
i buy yr smile and make gd novel
i love yr huge tender laugh
y cant be tired of smile
am i crazy to fall in y
moment and hours and nights call y
hear my heart
call y ma love
y cant be tired from smil
y make my life beuty
make the flut play lovely ryham
if pep cant belive the sun rise here
and bird sing to me
belive in y ma love
smiling to me at kitshin
that nt crossword
or complix to understand
that love from first sight
just i wish to be y and me and love under lovely stars
travel throw life
y and me and love
i cant enjoy without yr smile
i wish to be dive in yr eyes
ma soulmat
and make sun grow in that kitshin
i buy yr smile and make gd novel
i love yr huge tender laugh
y cant be tired of smile
am i crazy to fall in y
moment and hours and nights call y
hear my heart
call y ma love
y cant be tired from smil
y make my life beuty
make the flut play lovely ryham
if pep cant belive the sun rise here
and bird sing to me
belive in y ma love
smiling to me at kitshin
that nt crossword
or complix to understand
that love from first sight
just i wish to be y and me and love under lovely stars
travel throw life
y and me and love
i cant enjoy without yr smile
i wish to be dive in yr eyes
ma soulmat
October 6, 2025
Unfortunately had to dnf this one. SOOO VERY BORING I JUST COULD NOT, it was nothing like I hoped it would be from the blurb; every two sentences had an asterisk with an explanatory note at the end, and I appreciate a good g&t but when over 50% of the book is explaining which brand of gin you’re trying out it gets a bit much. There’s also an EXTENSIVE 30~ pages at the back explaining things discussed throughout the book; that only excited me because I didn’t plan to read it, and the idea of finishing the book sooner gave me hope. Ultimately though, I just could not hack it. Womp womp :(
September 13, 2023
Got 100 pages in and not a lot has happened nor does there seem like much of a plot. It’s just quite boring. Hate starting and not finishing a book but based on other reviews it really doesn’t sound like it’s worth continuing with!
May 25, 2026
Este libro puede resumirse en muy poco, solo es un hombre tibio yearning por una mujer que no conoce en lo absoluto pidiendole a una mujer que muere por él que escriba su historia (inexistente). Demasiado lento, nunca pasa nada.
Read
August 3, 2023Not quite ready to rate it. I am a courtly love/sonnet cycle aficionado, and this story/novel/report needs some thinking.
January 29, 2024
A waste of time
February 19, 2026
Patience is what you need for this book. Would have been a great case study whilst I did my English literature degree, but truly found this “novel” intolerable.
November 19, 2018
As a personal enjoyment rating, Caroline's Bikini falls somewhere between 1-star and 2-stars, because it's actually 267 pages of waffle around Evan Gordonston's unrequited love for Caroline Beresford, the married woman he's renting rooms from (actually, a whole upper floor).
The main text of the 'novel' (text? experiment? essay?) revolves around Evan telling his best friend, Emily Stuart, how in love he is with Caroline, but also how he doesn't ever do anything to pursue that love other than sit around and drink coffee with her (she's married, the time isn't right) and then rhapsodise to Emily about how wonderful she is. It's evident in the text that Emily is half in love with her best friend (though obviously, she can't admit it to him, they're best friends!), and whilst he does say he loves her once or twice (I don't recall exactly, because a lot of the stuff is repeated over the text, so the same scenario may appear multiple times) he obviously isn't serious about it, because he's in love with this Caroline person, which is the only reason why he's meeting Emily--because she's his confidante, and because they're writing a novel about this great love of his. Which doesn't go anywhere. Throughout the whole story. And then it ends with this very strange scenario. (Evan, you did what?!)
Actually, scrap the unrequited love bit. This is a story of a man descending into depression and madness because he thinks he's in love with someone.
---
But I rated it with three stars, so that requires a justification.
In terms of prose, the writing is lovely. Despite a tendency towards overly long sentences full of commas and an inability to take a breath (I find myself writing in this same style: see extremely long sentence above), Caroline's Bikini is full of tenderness and longing, sensual and grounded... and is actually a very clever piece of metatextual work.
Scattered throughout the main text of the 'novel' are various footnotes, few of which give extra information, most of which refer to sections in the "Some Further Materials" section. Initially, I thought these footnotes were useless--to see wonderfully done footnotes, pick up any Ankh-Morpork novel by Terry Pratchett--but then I got to the said Further Materials section and realised...
Caroline's Bikini is something of a literary criticism of a piece of text (it doesn't feel novel-like enough for me to call it a novel) written in the stream-of-consciousness style about a writer who is writing about writing a novel. Kirsty Gunn says it herself in the Alternative Narratives often footnoted:
To put it succinctly, this meta piece of writing is so meta. And as I am not a lit student (I study creative writing, and my undergrad is in accounting, as I find myself saying so often as introduction nowadays), I shall give up on understanding the references and close this review.
Three stars because I really don't know how to define how much I was bored by the story, but also how much I was awed by the meta-ness of it, though I am really too lazy to analyse it any further.
The main text of the 'novel' (text? experiment? essay?) revolves around Evan telling his best friend, Emily Stuart, how in love he is with Caroline, but also how he doesn't ever do anything to pursue that love other than sit around and drink coffee with her (she's married, the time isn't right) and then rhapsodise to Emily about how wonderful she is. It's evident in the text that Emily is half in love with her best friend (though obviously, she can't admit it to him, they're best friends!), and whilst he does say he loves her once or twice (I don't recall exactly, because a lot of the stuff is repeated over the text, so the same scenario may appear multiple times) he obviously isn't serious about it, because he's in love with this Caroline person, which is the only reason why he's meeting Emily--because she's his confidante, and because they're writing a novel about this great love of his. Which doesn't go anywhere. Throughout the whole story. And then it ends with this very strange scenario. (Evan, you did what?!)
Actually, scrap the unrequited love bit. This is a story of a man descending into depression and madness because he thinks he's in love with someone.
---
But I rated it with three stars, so that requires a justification.
In terms of prose, the writing is lovely. Despite a tendency towards overly long sentences full of commas and an inability to take a breath (I find myself writing in this same style: see extremely long sentence above), Caroline's Bikini is full of tenderness and longing, sensual and grounded... and is actually a very clever piece of metatextual work.
Scattered throughout the main text of the 'novel' are various footnotes, few of which give extra information, most of which refer to sections in the "Some Further Materials" section. Initially, I thought these footnotes were useless--to see wonderfully done footnotes, pick up any Ankh-Morpork novel by Terry Pratchett--but then I got to the said Further Materials section and realised...
Caroline's Bikini is something of a literary criticism of a piece of text (it doesn't feel novel-like enough for me to call it a novel) written in the stream-of-consciousness style about a writer who is writing about writing a novel. Kirsty Gunn says it herself in the Alternative Narratives often footnoted:
Caroline's Bikini, the work of a Stuart about Gordonston, arranged by a Gunn...was never to be a prose work belonging to anything other than the Scottish and modernist project, with roots in the early Renaissance tradition of Petrarchan love poetry by way of a long-standing debt to writing by Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.
To put it succinctly, this meta piece of writing is so meta. And as I am not a lit student (I study creative writing, and my undergrad is in accounting, as I find myself saying so often as introduction nowadays), I shall give up on understanding the references and close this review.
Three stars because I really don't know how to define how much I was bored by the story, but also how much I was awed by the meta-ness of it, though I am really too lazy to analyse it any further.
October 25, 2020
This is a brilliant 'novel', wonderfully inventive and deliciously and slowly revealing page by page two interwoven lives from a single moment in which one of the 'characters' Evan falls in love with the eponymous Caroline with, as he puts it, a 'ping' but which Nin (Emily really but Evan refers to her all the way by this old childhood nickname) - the narrator and for me, heroine - refers to as a 'BANG'
Ms. Gunn has lots of fun throughout playing with this novel's 'novel' form - and this reader had fun too reading it - it may not be to everyone's taste but you can have immense enjoyment in solely reading the four parts of Nin's outputs - Ready, Steady, Go and Finishing Lines - which constitute the bulk of the book. If you are reading this then you already know the outline of the 'plot'. I don't have any wish to flesh that out, I only want to say how it worked for me.
There are really only two characters, Nin and Evan, maybe in fact only one, Nin herself as everything in the story comes refracted through Nin and it is her who is the most interesting person in the book. She writes of course about other people, Evan mostly and of his love for Caroline - which felt deeply true, and obtusely of her family and friends. Whole life stories are 'told' but cleverly not in minute detail and things constantly come out muddled amongst other things but somehow wholly naturally because that seems to me to be how our minds work.
Nin is a delightful character, not in any cutesy or wishy-washy way, but in the sense of feeling real and honest and kind and caring and scatter-brained and a little unworldly and loving. All of this is revealed bit by bit throughout. I would love to sit and drink gin with her while getting to know one another.
Evan also comes across in Nin's narrative as a decent straight-up chap, despite what he asks Nin to do. His infatuation for Caroline as mentioned seemed totally realistic and understandable to me, as a male - although maybe to a female it might simply seem pathetic. He isn't at all pathetic. Ultimately he gets 'woke' - to use a trendy Americanism that he probably wouldn't - well at least I hope he did.
Brilliant and I will put it on my re-read list for next year.
Ms. Gunn has lots of fun throughout playing with this novel's 'novel' form - and this reader had fun too reading it - it may not be to everyone's taste but you can have immense enjoyment in solely reading the four parts of Nin's outputs - Ready, Steady, Go and Finishing Lines - which constitute the bulk of the book. If you are reading this then you already know the outline of the 'plot'. I don't have any wish to flesh that out, I only want to say how it worked for me.
There are really only two characters, Nin and Evan, maybe in fact only one, Nin herself as everything in the story comes refracted through Nin and it is her who is the most interesting person in the book. She writes of course about other people, Evan mostly and of his love for Caroline - which felt deeply true, and obtusely of her family and friends. Whole life stories are 'told' but cleverly not in minute detail and things constantly come out muddled amongst other things but somehow wholly naturally because that seems to me to be how our minds work.
Nin is a delightful character, not in any cutesy or wishy-washy way, but in the sense of feeling real and honest and kind and caring and scatter-brained and a little unworldly and loving. All of this is revealed bit by bit throughout. I would love to sit and drink gin with her while getting to know one another.
Evan also comes across in Nin's narrative as a decent straight-up chap, despite what he asks Nin to do. His infatuation for Caroline as mentioned seemed totally realistic and understandable to me, as a male - although maybe to a female it might simply seem pathetic. He isn't at all pathetic. Ultimately he gets 'woke' - to use a trendy Americanism that he probably wouldn't - well at least I hope he did.
Brilliant and I will put it on my re-read list for next year.
November 5, 2018
I think this book might be too clever for its own good. As an exercise in deconstructing a novel, it's ingenious. But the playful, self-aware approach is as frustrating as it is enjoyable to read. I found myself continually second-guessing the author, and wondering whether there was any real substance to anything in the book, or if it was all a big academic experiment.
The author (and meta-author) ask these same questions throughout the book itself. It's undeniably fun, but it's all head stuff - you really have to go digging to find any heart.
The author (and meta-author) ask these same questions throughout the book itself. It's undeniably fun, but it's all head stuff - you really have to go digging to find any heart.
September 10, 2022
I can't believe I gave this book to my boyfriend as a holiday read without reading it first...poor guy finished it in the week and I wish I'd never encountered it. Parts of the concept of the book were clever but poorly executed and so wrapped up in trying to be clever with the footnotes and essays at the end that it failed in it's main project: to be a story. The circular narration of Nin was just irritating from the get go, wish the story would have been better and stronger and not just this fake academising, self-important and pretentious bits getting in the way of it's core.
April 3, 2020
En ce qui me concerne ce fut une lecture penible. Les repetitions, la pretention. Quelques idees/concepts m'ont intriguee mais leur repetition est rapidement devenue pesante. Pour ce qui est de la reciprocite ou non de cet amour, il eut encore fallu qu'Evan declare sa flamme pour que nous en sachions quelque chose. Nous voyons de loin le tourment d'Evan, comme des voyeurs, mais rien ne permet de nous le faire sentir. Sa voix ne se fait pas entendre.
September 6, 2018
Such hard work. The ultimate meta novel. Very mixed feelings about it although it did provide a lot of ammunition for my book club group (run by Faber and House of Saint Barnabas if anyone's interested). Great writer but the book is too clever for its own good.
February 22, 2021
A beautifully written very clever book! Carolines’s Bikini wears its literary weight lightly, with lots of added zest and sparkling wit. Definitely a novel (?) I shall be going back to. Wonderful stuff!
July 23, 2018
Quirky, self-aware, and delightful. (My mom and I met the author at a reading in St Andrews, and she provided useful insights into the form, which was a plus.)
November 27, 2019
Not the typical plot I enjoy. It didn't get very far from the start, it went round similar circles expanding a little at a time..a lot of subtle points I may have missed.
February 20, 2021
Traduction hasardeuse. Style du roman ne m’a pas plu. Histoire confuse.
March 23, 2022
If I could have rated this book any less I would have. The only redeeming feature of this book is the cover!
Read
January 19, 2023read if you like zany forms, committing to the bit, unrequited love and have a lot of patience for a slow burn.
February 13, 2023
I can usually finish any book, but this was so irritating and boring I just couldn't face reading any more and genuinely didn't care what might happen later in the 'story'
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