Swimming Home - Whole Book (Spoilers allowed)

[Hugh]

This thread is for free discussion of all elements of the book, so expect spoilers.

A few introductory questions: How well did Levy draw you into her characters? Were there any you instinctively liked or disliked? Any thoughts about the prose style? I don't want to dictate the shape of the discussion too much, so any other thoughts are welcome.

[Bill]

When I see the title, I always think of this movie:
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-swimmer/

They don't have anything to do with each other though.

[Bill]

My second time. I only remember some superficial details from the first reading.

I love how Levy immediately draws us in:

When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation.

And we're not told who the male character is! The obvious guess is Joe, but I suppose we'll find out later. I really like her approach in general: the tight expositions, the clean, uncluttered prose, the nuanced and uncomfortable social interactions, the constant posing of questions.

I tend not to think about whether I like or dislike particular characters.

I'm already looking forward to Levy's new book Real Estate, out in a couple weeks.

[Jenna]

I really liked how the "foreshadowing" opening is actually a kind of red-herring. That the danger in Kitty seems to be one thing - reckless, manic, inward - but actually turns out to be something much more sinister, that wrecks outwards. Isabel misjudges completely because she doesn't know enough about her husband's psychic vulnerabilities, her daughter's teen longings, mistakes the charisma that mania carries. Maybe compared to the threats of war Kitty seems harmless, but she goes off like a landmine.

I dont have it in front of me, but the quote that struck me as evocative of the experience of reading the book is when Nina says that standing next to Kitty is like being next to someone opening a bottle of champaign, shower by the sparkling spray. I found the book very fast, almost frenetic, like I was manic with Kitty. But I loved her writing. Each detailed specific moment is like a key hole you can see whole relationships through, and so sensory I was there in that moment with the characters.

[Sarah]

I loved the psychologically complex characters. In that sense, I liked Kitty most since there are so many facets to her personality and behavior. Levy was brilliant in her use of negative space to craft this character. Many questions came to mind about plot, relationships, and closure while reading about Kitty.

[Bretnie]

At the beginning of the book it felt a lot like Ali Smith's The Accidental, which I really liked. It's so hard when you start a book comparing it to another! But the characters all had a different feel as the book evolved.

I admit I didn't really like Kitty. But I liked the mystery of figuring her out. Not that I've figured her out...

[Bill]

Madeleine's "feature" is hilarious.

We get a variation on "A Mountain Road. Midnight". These little narrative disruptions keep us on our toes.

The dinner scene "Manners" reads a little like a Robert Altman ensemble piece, with all the little verbal barbs. There's this cruelty toward her characters, that's also in her earlier novel I've read, Billy and Girl. Her wit is more gentle in her more recent books, like The Man Who Saw Everything.

[Hugh]

Billy and Girl is one of the few Levy fictions I have not read. I first read this one shortly after reading Hot Milk, and there are many similarities with that book too.

Second time round, the clues as to how the book ends are there throughout, not least in the repeated returns to the opening scene. Nina and Isabel made stronger impressions, perhaps because I was less distracted by the cinematic/visual parts of the story.

I suspect this is a book that can be read in many different ways.

[Margaret]

I ended up calling the characters by nicknames, e. g. : Naked Kitty and Physician Heal Thyself. Kitty appeared to be the only one willing to show herself as is, and the psychiatrist, well...

Really enjoyed the looping back around of so many scenes and how each something different was made more (or less) clear.

[Mark]

Jenna, I also felt drawn into Kitty's mania. I was also struck by the vivid details of the world around them: the pool with its dead insects and pine cones, the shade after the hot fields around the orchard. I spent memorable summers in the foothills of California, and the setting provoked vivid sensory recollections.

The development strongly recalled Jaques Rivette's 4 hour La Belle Noiseuse. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101428/

They both have the troubed artist, the (often naked) interloper, and the vivid French Mediterranean setting.

[Bill]

Hugh wrote: "Billy and Girl is one of the few Levy fictions I have not read. I first read this one shortly after reading Hot Milk..."

I enjoyed Hot Milk too. Billy and Girl is, as I recall, maybe even sharper and more cruel.

The cruelty can get to me after awhile. But Levy's prose is so sharp, and often so funny, that I can overlook my reservations:

If he couldn't talk about her poem what good was he? He might as well move to the countryside and run the tombola stand at the church fete.

Yup.

[Bretnie]

What did you think Isabel's motivations were to let Kitty stay at the house? Was it just to drive her husband to cheat, or was there something else I missed?

[Marc]

Bill wrote: "When I see the title, I always think of this movie:
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-swimmer/"

Never heard of this movie, but it's got to be based on the phenomenal short story by Cheever, "The Swimmer". It's one of my favorite shorts.

This was my first time reading Levy and it certainly won't be my last. This is one of those moth-to-the-flame novels where, as reader, I know I'm headed toward tragedy/chaos but I'm unable to resist. Just finished last night. Still gathering my thoughts...

Quick initial question:
How did others interpret the initial scene with Kitty in the pool? Seemed almost like a suicide attempt on Kitty's part, but like much of Levy's writing in this story, it kind of straddles the fence (like, hey, this naked girl was just seeing how long she could hold her breath underwater) and acts as a foreshadowing of sorts.

[Jenna]

Bretnie wrote: "What did you think Isabel's motivations were to let Kitty stay at the house? Was it just to drive her husband to cheat, or was there something else I missed?"

Bretnie, this is one of the key questions in my mind. Much is made of Isabel's job as a war correspondent, her inability to stay put in domesticity - she is an "adrenaline junkie" if you will. So I think she was drawn to disruptive possibilities of Kitty (who being naked in the pool is clearly not normal from second one) for a summer long "idyll" that she probably is struggling with. This seems to work for a bit, the presence of Kitty, and Joe's attraction to her, actually prompts him to be more attentive to Isabel, draws them together and increases their sex life together - we see this second hand through Nina's recollection when she sees the honey and the rumpled sheets. So I think Isabel wanted Kitty to create a frisson of danger that would allow her to connect with Joe. She just underestimated the destructive force, and the vulnerability of Joe - maybe because her own death wish is so externalized (being in war zones) she couldn't recognize Joe's internal pull.

[Bill]

It's hard for me to relate to the characters as people. (This is typical for me, with Levy's fiction.) They keep saying and doing unpredictable things, against their self-interest. And I'm constantly distracted by the witty verbal barbs, and Levy's uncharitable observations and speculations.

In case you're not familiar with Kitty's favorite poem (I'm not):
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/arti...

[Bretnie]

Oh gosh, Jenna, that's such a great insight on Isabel. Your take makes so much sense!

[Bill]

At the end, it's not clear what happened or why. But I don't need any of that when I read Deborah Levy! I'm probably an exception in this conversation. But it's really not interesting to me why Isabel offered Kitty a place to stay, how Joe ended up where he ended up, what the yellow fact sheet said, etc etc.

But what is important is the beauty of the last section:

... All the same, I always say it.

I say it every night, especially when it rains.

[Hugh]

Levy's treatment of her characters is a little reminiscent of Iris Murdoch - for me too their motives are secondary to the demands of the structure.

[Mark]

Jenna, good analysis of Isabel! It was refreshing to be granted access to each character's view, especially Nina's. Kitty was a supportive mentor to her. In fact, she was supportive to Joe as well. I don't think things turned out as she expected.

[Bretnie]

Mark wrote: "Jenna, good analysis of Isabel! It was refreshing to be granted access to each character's view, especially Nina's. Kitty was a supportive mentor to her. In fact, she was supportive to Joe as well...."

Mark, that's interesting - I had the opposite view of Kitty. That her intentions were never good. But I could be wrong about that! And I'm open to multiple interpretations since it sounds like Levy likes to leave things a bit vague.

[Hugh]

Another angle may be to see Kitty's behaviour as a form of class war.

[Sam]

What a fun novel to read! I like how Levy draws on twentieth century literary or critical movements and trends to construct this, leaving it as Hugh and others said, very open to interpretation. The biggest critical influences seemed to be Surrealism and Freudian criticism, but as I was reading I felt Joe was described with a very existential fatedness. If anyone caught others, I am interested what they found.

(view spoiler)[My reading keys on Nina and looks at the novel as a construct of a present day Nina's attempted rationalization of a traumatizing event from her past. Her memory incorporates fears, dreams, and imaginings, that would have been processed by her education over the time she grew from a child to an adult. Within that processed memory is an amalgam of clues to what happened and why, and different readers can draw different conclusions to their satisfaction. For example, I found resolution to the why in Joe's backstory, told to us the last chapter before the coda, as a possible consequence of survivor's guilt. (hide spoiler)]

[Jenna]

I also liked seeing so many characters. This is an ensemble piece, and I think Levy is exploring how people affect not only each other but themselves when they judge others by their own yardsticks, and so misjudge. At the same time, Isabel, Kitty and Nina make a core triangle of interaction with Joe in the center.

I initially thought of Kitty as a force of nature, but by the end, I decided she went there planning to help Joe commit suicide - she thinks his poems are a "conversation with her" in a very literal sense and in the car at the end she makes it clear what she thinks he has been saying - that he is suicidal (which he confirms to us in his thoughts) and she is going to give him permission to follow through on that long-standing impulse, is going to "help" him. She collected the "drowning stones", so there is planning. She has stopped taking her own medications so she is free to act out the impulses that might otherwise be controlled. We all mistake her meaning until the very end however, even Joe who complains about the depressed demanding things, he thinks it is attention, but Kitty wants to go through a suicide without dying herself - she performs it vicariously through Joe. She breaks through all the restraints that he has put up around himself to prevent this act, and he knows it is coming and can't stop it, doesn't seem to try to stop it. Nina's forgiveness of him at the end is such a state of grace, and a gift to us readers as well to know that she survived into a seemingly healthy adulthood.

[Sarah]

Jenna - Your triangulation theory works for me, corralling some of my wild thinking about characters. Also, the idea of "Kitty's vicarious suicide" helps reach the closure I sought for the ending. So reassuring to know that "The kid is alright" (The Who). Reading two books in one month with themes of Sylvia Plath, suicide and rain was a little much for me.

Sam - Surrealism was very apparent for me, beginning with Kitty in the pool from the start. I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts about the influence of Freudian criticism.

[Tamara]

I got the book yesterday and just finished it this morning. It's the first time I read a Deborah Levy. I'm still not sure what to make of it, but I feel its power. It's the sort of book that invites analysis and discussion probably because there aren't any clear-cut answers.

My first impressions may not make any sense, but these are the things that struck me:

Levy establishes an atmosphere of impending doom from the opening pages. We sense something terrible is going to happen. She establishes Kitty as manic, so we think it involves Kitty. In a way, it does because Kitty is there to help Joe out of his misery. Joe and Kitty talk the same language.

I found myself focusing on Isabel more than the other characters. She is severely depressed. I felt sorry for her. She has seen so much suffering and so many examples of man's inhumanity to man that she can't seem to find her way back to see something positive in life. The irony is Kitty is the only one who seems to understand her. She recognizes Isabel plans to leave Joe and that she invited her to stay because she wants his infidelity to provide a reason for her to leave him. So Kitty understands Isabel and talks her language.

We are left with a manic Kitty who understands Joe in a way his wife does not; and a Kitty who understands Isabel's ennui and despair in a way her husband does not.

I'm still trying to figure out the novel. But its power is unmistakable and has whet my appetite to read more of her novels.

[Tamara]

Did Joe drown himself? I thought so, but then Kitty tells Mitchell he shot himself. Did he shoot himself and fall in the pool? Unless I missed it, I don't think there was any mention of blood in the pool. Which is it? Drowning? Gun shot? Both?

[Tamara]

Just one more note:

All the characters are haunted, but their demons hidden.
Isabel is haunted by the carnage she witnessed as a war correspondent.
Joe is haunted by his childhood trauma.
Laura and Mitchell are losing their business.
Kitty, who is certifiable, is the only one who fully exposes her demons. Coincidentally, she is the only one who prances around naked, exposing her vulnerabilities both physically and mentally.

I'll stop now :)

[Sam]

Sarah wrote: "Jenna - Your triangulation theory works for me, corralling some of my wild thinking about characters. Also, the idea of "Kitty's vicarious suicide" helps reach the closure I sought for the ending. ..."

All I meant by Freudian criticism was that criticism that utilizes ideas or methods of Freud. These include for example psychological analysis, conscious and unconscious meanings, hidden motivations, interpretation of dreams, and psychosexual origins in behaviors. Using the initial pool scene, the surreal aspect even down to the bear/bare pun was obvious to you. What follows, especially where Isabel invites the girl to stay and stages the pool furniture in a way that places Kitty between her and Joe would prompt the Freudian questions. Why did she invite Kitty? Why place Kitty between her and Joe? etc. And in trying to answer those questions, we would doing a Freudian analysis of our own. I think during the twentieth century we saw works created that played into that type of analysis. One good example would be Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, which almost demands that type of interpretation and where critics extend their analysis to the author himself. Another example, somewhat better, is Hitchcock films, especially Psycho, where Hitchcock seems to be having fun with all the Freudian stuff. A more modern film example would be David Lynch whose films blend multiple elements including surreal and Freudian triggers. I think Levy is engaging these elements to stimulate her audience just as Lynch does.

[Sam]

My edition had an introduction by Tom McCarthy that I thought was pretty good. I usually skip introductions until after I have read the book and then often forget about them and skip them altogether. I remembered here and found it worth it.

[Kathleen]

I got about half-way through this, but it just isn't for me. I feel bad because I voted for it in the poll, but the discussion seems to be going well so I don't feel too bad. :-) I enjoyed everyone's comments, regardless!