Scan barcode
tamdot's review
4.0
Books captivate readers for a number of reasons. Maybe it’s a character that reminds you of someone you know or someone you want to know. Maybe it’s a setting that you’ve always dreamt of. Maybe the plot engages your attention fully, refusing to let go even as it twists and turns.
If you’re lucky, a book captivates you because of its author’s voice and its author’s awareness of how to build character relationships and how to maintain suspense. Readers of Matt Bondurant’s The Night Swimmer can consider themselves among the lucky.
Bondurant centers his story on an American couple who win a pub in Ireland. Many people might take the cash equivalent of the prize, but Elly and Fred make the decision to leave everything and everyone they know behind. As Fred restores the pub in Baltimore, Elly spends her time swimming in the waters off Cape Clear Island.
Elly has a minor genetic abnormality (an evenly distributed, thin layer of fat) that allows her to spend long amounts of time in cold water. Her communion with the ocean is one of the strong points of Bondurant’s writing, likely because he is a long-distance swimmer himself.
A side note – the locations in The Night Swimmer are real, and images are available on the web if Bondurant’s word paintings make you want more.
Another strong point of the novel is the bond between Elly and Fred. Bondurant doesn’t describe their love in over-the-top prose. He lets his characters’ actions speak for themselves. It’s clear these two love each other, which makes it slightly confusing when events of the novel begin to overtake their relationship.
Elly and Fred begin to feel the power of the Corrigan family which controls most of the commerce and culture of Baltimore and Cape Clear. The Americans are outsiders and Elly’s growing awareness of the undercurrents on Cape Clear make them more of a target. Fred retreats into a novel he’s trying to write and neglects the needs of the bar. Elly retreats into her swimming and getting to know Cape Clear. The two start to drift apart, but Bondurant never fully explains why.
It’s a jarring flaw in the novel. Other plot points go unexplained. For some of them, this works – Elly starts to learn about mysteries on the island and she may not need all the answers. Some of the island’s mysteries though cry out for explanations, at least for the reader.
Highgate, a blind goat farmer who becomes central to the story, may be more than he seems. As may the Fastnet lighthouse, which exerts a strange pull on Elly.
It’s to Bondurant’s credit though that these flaws are minor. The story is told from Elly’s point of view, and Bondurant never once drops the female perspective, a feat not all male authors can pull off. The mood he creates throughout The Night Swimmer pulls a reader in. His descriptions of setting and character are active. Readers experience the setting as Elly does, not as a laundry list of flora and fauna. Even when Elly befriends a visiting birder (who offers his own threat to her marriage), her exposure to the numerous species excites the readers, rather than becoming a mind-numbing list of bird names.
The novel builds exquisitely to a series of climaxes before ending on what may seem an abrupt note. Perhaps that’s an area for improvement in Bondurant’s writing. Or perhaps it’s just a sign of not wanting to find yourself on the last pages of a book.
If you’re lucky, a book captivates you because of its author’s voice and its author’s awareness of how to build character relationships and how to maintain suspense. Readers of Matt Bondurant’s The Night Swimmer can consider themselves among the lucky.
Bondurant centers his story on an American couple who win a pub in Ireland. Many people might take the cash equivalent of the prize, but Elly and Fred make the decision to leave everything and everyone they know behind. As Fred restores the pub in Baltimore, Elly spends her time swimming in the waters off Cape Clear Island.
Elly has a minor genetic abnormality (an evenly distributed, thin layer of fat) that allows her to spend long amounts of time in cold water. Her communion with the ocean is one of the strong points of Bondurant’s writing, likely because he is a long-distance swimmer himself.
A side note – the locations in The Night Swimmer are real, and images are available on the web if Bondurant’s word paintings make you want more.
Another strong point of the novel is the bond between Elly and Fred. Bondurant doesn’t describe their love in over-the-top prose. He lets his characters’ actions speak for themselves. It’s clear these two love each other, which makes it slightly confusing when events of the novel begin to overtake their relationship.
Elly and Fred begin to feel the power of the Corrigan family which controls most of the commerce and culture of Baltimore and Cape Clear. The Americans are outsiders and Elly’s growing awareness of the undercurrents on Cape Clear make them more of a target. Fred retreats into a novel he’s trying to write and neglects the needs of the bar. Elly retreats into her swimming and getting to know Cape Clear. The two start to drift apart, but Bondurant never fully explains why.
It’s a jarring flaw in the novel. Other plot points go unexplained. For some of them, this works – Elly starts to learn about mysteries on the island and she may not need all the answers. Some of the island’s mysteries though cry out for explanations, at least for the reader.
Highgate, a blind goat farmer who becomes central to the story, may be more than he seems. As may the Fastnet lighthouse, which exerts a strange pull on Elly.
It’s to Bondurant’s credit though that these flaws are minor. The story is told from Elly’s point of view, and Bondurant never once drops the female perspective, a feat not all male authors can pull off. The mood he creates throughout The Night Swimmer pulls a reader in. His descriptions of setting and character are active. Readers experience the setting as Elly does, not as a laundry list of flora and fauna. Even when Elly befriends a visiting birder (who offers his own threat to her marriage), her exposure to the numerous species excites the readers, rather than becoming a mind-numbing list of bird names.
The novel builds exquisitely to a series of climaxes before ending on what may seem an abrupt note. Perhaps that’s an area for improvement in Bondurant’s writing. Or perhaps it’s just a sign of not wanting to find yourself on the last pages of a book.
theredqueen444's review
2.0
This book is full of long, beautiful narratives. It creates a wonderful buildup to the climax of the story. Then, instead of the characters dealing with the climax, there is choppy nothingness that leaves me wondering if it was worth my time at all.
scorpstar77's review
5.0
This book is mostly set in a small community in the southwest corner of Ireland. The narrator and her husband are Americans trying to cope with a near-miss on 9/11 who win a pub in the community in a contest. The story tracks their relationship with each other and with the people who live in and/or regularly visit this community over about a 9-month period.
That doesn't sound like a completely fascinating tale, or it sounds like it could be rather comforting and pastoral...and it instead completely defies expectations. This is not a quiet book. It is not comforting. It is very suspenseful and edgy, which fascinates me in a book that is decidedly not a traditional thriller or mystery. There are crimes, but this is not a book focused on solving crimes. There is corruption, but that's not the point either. There is open-water swimming and sailing and Irish tales and Gaelic, all of which add to the atmosphere of the story, but they're only decorations for the real action. Deep at its heart, I think this is a story of testing (and accepting) one's limits, and of how hard it is to love another person and still be yourself. But with all of that told in a very suspenseful way.
That doesn't sound like a completely fascinating tale, or it sounds like it could be rather comforting and pastoral...and it instead completely defies expectations. This is not a quiet book. It is not comforting. It is very suspenseful and edgy, which fascinates me in a book that is decidedly not a traditional thriller or mystery. There are crimes, but this is not a book focused on solving crimes. There is corruption, but that's not the point either. There is open-water swimming and sailing and Irish tales and Gaelic, all of which add to the atmosphere of the story, but they're only decorations for the real action. Deep at its heart, I think this is a story of testing (and accepting) one's limits, and of how hard it is to love another person and still be yourself. But with all of that told in a very suspenseful way.
psteve's review
4.0
This is a pretty gripping tale, steeped in atmosphere and location. Elly and Fred win a contest that awards them a pub in Baltimore, a town in the extreme Southwest of Ireland. Elly is a swimmer who loves the open ocean, but what she finds on the island of Clear and the lighthouse island of Fastnet is something very strange that exposes the strengths and weaknesses of her marriage, and the strange history of the island.
This is a gripping book, with well-drawn characters and a solid sense of place and time. The ending is fast and confusing and gripping and maybe unforgettable.
This is a gripping book, with well-drawn characters and a solid sense of place and time. The ending is fast and confusing and gripping and maybe unforgettable.
madanburg's review
2.0
I kept wanting to like this more, but it felt too much like Gothic Elements 101. Time to throw in a mysterious musician! Up next, the anthropomorphic animal with portentous powers! I prefer more organic, less textbook.
wildflower37's review
3.0
The sense of place is so strong in this book that it is a character unto itself, perhaps the steadiest of the narrative. Regardless of the beautiful sentences, I found myself struggling to understand the events as they were described. What started as a very promising story left me confused by the end.
More...