Swimming Home in Aussie Readers

Sep 13, 2015 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc-are, aussie-author, provided-by-publisher

Swimming Home is the sixth novel by Mary-Rose MacColl, her previous book In Falling Snow was a favourite read of mine in 2012.

Exploring the themes of family, belonging, regret, and redemption, Swimming Home is a gracious and engaging novel.

When fifteen year old Catherine is orphaned, her aunt, Dr Louisa Quick, insists she abandons her idyllic island home in the Torres Strait and move with her to London. An independent and busy surgeon, Louisa is determined to provide her niece with the opportuni
Swimming Home is the sixth novel by Mary-Rose MacColl, her previous book In Falling Snow was a favourite read of mine in 2012.

Exploring the themes of family, belonging, regret, and redemption, Swimming Home is a gracious and engaging novel.

When fifteen year old Catherine is orphaned, her aunt, Dr Louisa Quick, insists she abandons her idyllic island home in the Torres Strait and move with her to London. An independent and busy surgeon, Louisa is determined to provide her niece with the opportunity to become a well educated and successful young lady, but Catherine is miserable in her exclusive day school, missing the warmth of her Islander family, and the ocean. It's not until Catherine swims the width of the Thames on a dare and Louisa is approached by the enigmatic banker Manfred Lear Black, that she reconsiders her plans for her niece.

As a doctor, Louisa is intelligent and confident, but she struggles to relate to her niece and, uncomfortable with emotion, she makes some poor decisions when it comes to seeing to Catherine's well being. Though there is no malice intended, Louisa's actions have far reaching consequences and she suffers a crisis of conscience as the novel progresses. Louisa is not a particularly likeable character at times but I think MacColl portrays her well, and I was sympathetic to her flaws.

Catherine is resigned to her new life in London and wants to please her aunt, but she is lonely and homesick. Having spent almost everyday of her life swimming in the ocean, she jumps at the chance to swim to under Manfred Lear Black's patronage in New York. I felt for Catherine, whose loving and idyllic childhood came to such an abrupt end. She is remarkably stoic, but her longing is palpable and she obviously feels out of place, London contrasts sharply with her island home, as does the New York 'tanks' to her beloved ocean.

There are two subtle threads of mystery that run through the story, and a few surprises in the plot though Swimming Home progresses at a measured pace. What action there is stems largely from the Black's determination that Catherine will be the first woman to swim the breadth of the English Channel. MacColl weaves fiction with fact as she writes of Catherine's competitors, including Gertrude Ederle who was the first woman to swim the channel in 1926 and I enjoyed learning something about the birth of competitive swimming for women.

Set in an interesting period, with complex characters and a thoughtful story, Swimming Home is a finely written, poignant and pensive, but ultimately uplifting novel.

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Sep 30, 2015 Bree T rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, historical-fiction, indigenous, indigenous-culture, 1920s, aww2015

It’s 1925 and after an idyllic childhood growing up in the Torres Strait Islands, learning to swim in the clear warm waters, Catherine finds herself an orphan and living with her aunt in England. She’s miserable, trapped in a school where she doesn’t fit in, where she hasn’t been raised the same way as the other girls. She can’t swim, something she has lived for as long as she can remember. Her aunt Louisa is a busy doctor and she holds views on the way Catherine needs to behave now. The time fo It’s 1925 and after an idyllic childhood growing up in the Torres Strait Islands, learning to swim in the clear warm waters, Catherine finds herself an orphan and living with her aunt in England. She’s miserable, trapped in a school where she doesn’t fit in, where she hasn’t been raised the same way as the other girls. She can’t swim, something she has lived for as long as she can remember. Her aunt Louisa is a busy doctor and she holds views on the way Catherine needs to behave now. The time for running wild on the island is over – she needs to grow up into a well rounded young woman who now has the opportunity to do anything, to be anything.

A chance meeting with rich American Manfred Lear Black gives Catherine the opportunity she so desperately craves – the chance to swim. He convinces Catherine to come to New York and go up against some of America’s best female swimmers. He’s convinced that she could be the first woman to successfully swim the English Channel and he’s willing to provide the financial backing for her attempt. But is it simply an innocent interest in finding a champion or does he have deeper motives?

Swimming Home is the latest novel from bestselling author Mary-Rose MacColl and it gives the reader three very different settings – an island in the Torres Strait off the coast of the northern tip of Australia, London and then New York. Catherine grew up the daughter of a doctor who worked on a remote island in the Torres Strait. She learned to swim in the open water at an incredibly young age and it’s something that shapes her entire life, as are her relationships with her father’s native housekeeper, who has cared for Catherine since the death of her mother when she was a toddler, as well as the housekeeper’s son Michael. On the island, the relationships are different, although the native Torres Straight Islanders do not escape having their children taken to be ‘fostered out’ among white families in order to see them raised properly and put to work.

When Catherine is 14, her father dies leaving her an orphan. He makes his sister, Catherine’s Aunt Louisa her guardian, someone Catherine has only seen once when she was a young child. Unmarried, Louisa is a busy surgeon, not at all sure of how to raise a teenage girl. Still she does her family duty and travels to the islands to bring Catherine back to England, seemingly unaware just how reluctant Catherine is to leave her home and move somewhere so utterly removed from everything she has ever known. To be honest I thought Louisa, although clueless about adolescents, did show quite a bit of shortsightedness here, thinking that enrolling Catherine in good school where she would be very unlikely to fit in, especially immediately would be the answer to Catherine’s development. I understand where she was coming from and her thoughts on how to raise Catherine, a girl who had been left to really kind of go wild, from an English point of view. But she really seems very oblivious to the fact that the girl has had so much change in her life and she’s miserable. She’s had the things and people she loves most taken from her and she’s moved to a place that’s the virtual opposite of everything she’s ever known. Louisa is very busy and she has trouble actually sitting down and talking to Catherine, as Catherine’s presence stirs up memories for her. It’s Louisa’s housekeeper Nellie who understands how lonely and out of place Catherine feels. When Catherine swims the Thames, she is asked to leave her exclusive school but it also in its own way, is the catalyst for the presentation of opportunity.

I really enjoyed reading about Catherine as a character – her unusual upbringing, her difficulty in fitting in once she moved to England and her devotion to swimming. For Catherine it wasn’t just a past time, it was a necessity. Something she required for her mental well being, it was almost as much a part of her life as breathing. And not just swimming, but the sort of open water swimming she had grown up with. Training in a tank in New York, attempting to adapt her stroke to what her coach wanted, wasn’t enough to satisfy the craving in her to just get out on the water and swim. I loved the part of the book devoted to swimming and the move towards the first woman being able to swim the English Channel. As someone who cannot really swim (bit embarrassing, being an Australian!), the idea of swimming such a distance is mind-boggling. The fatigue, the cold, the sheer length of time it takes – it’s amazing that someone of Catherine’s age with pretty much no formal training, could be considered for such a feat.

There are a few mysteries and twists in this book which are really interesting. So interesting in fact that I’d have loved to read more about the time before Catherine was born. The upbringing of Louisa and her medical studies and what happened to her would’ve been good to read about in greater detail, as well as Catherine’s parents’ marriage. There could’ve been a deeper delving into the island life of the early 1900’s, especially what it was like when her parents first arrived there. I really could’ve read a lot more in this setting.

Swimming Home is a beautifully written story of a girl who just wants the freedom to go home, to be with the people she loves and do what she loves. I did really like the way in which the relationship between Louisa and Catherine evolved, even though they did spent quite a bit of time apart. Louisa makes some difficult choices sometimes, you can see where she’s coming from and why she might do it but you can also see that it’s going to make things even more difficult between her and Catherine and from those different places they have to come together and reach an understanding, air the secrets between them in order to move forward. The believability and well-roundness of the characters are definitely a strong point and it’s the sort of book that makes you feel as if you know the people involved. I only wish there’d been more. ...more

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Oct 27, 2017 Robin rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was an interesting book, especially in the era in which it takes place, but I found the ending flat and for some reason I couldn't connect emotionally to the characters. So while it was an enjoyable read, the book didn't leave any lasting impression on me. ...more

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