I’s Reviews > At Swim, Two Boys > Status Update

The exceptional Evelyn—proud and carrying her legacy with elegance, hampered by her sex. Her acceptance of her nephew. A very stifled death—incarcerated and unable to fight.

It really does break my heart how they’ve tried to live happily, MacEmm tried to get Jim to live happily, only for violence to end this so terribly.

Doyler’s death is written with the briefness of a casualty. Terrible tragedy that he chased Jim into it—running to him. Jim, never interested in the ideology or fighting, thrived in this world he didn’t quite consider real.

Reminded of Forster: “When I am with him, smoking or talking quietly ahead, or whatever it may be, I see, beyond my own happiness and intimacy, occasional glimpses of the happiness of 1000s of others whose names 1 shall never hear, and know that there is a great unrecorded history.”
It’s echoed in the stories MacEmm shares and his wish that he had heard as a child—“these men loved and yet were noble.”

I understand Mr Mack’s wish that his friend from youth had been left in the past, as part of memories of glory. Instead, he re-entered his life and tainted any such memory through who he had become—a drunkard, ill, dead.

I find it somewhat chilling that Mr Doyle should die the day after Easter Sunday. Too late for a miracle.

Doyler’s return sees them on more equal footing. Jim has swum halfway to the island and back, twice. He’s grown in their separation.

“Anyone might dash a length. But to swim well, one must swim slow. […] Anyone might know such a boy. But to know him best, one must know him slow.”

There is a poignant elegance about Jim’s swimming lessons with MacMurrough. Doyler introduced him to swimming in the wildness of the sea, fighting against it and without form, but surviving and growing stronger. MacMurrough taught with class and experience, so that he entered rather than fought against the water and adopted its fluidity.