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A review by blchandler9000
Night Swim by Jessica Keener
2.0
This book was on sale and nearly every review I read, even the negative ones, praised its lovely prose. I thought I'd give it a try. It had been a long time since I'd read a book like this.
But it frustrated me. The prose was lovely; it was true. Keener has a talent for weaving a unique and evocative phrase. But I feel as if the story and its themes didn't match the depth of her writing skill.
Keener drives almost absent-mindedly through this tale of a teenage girl dealing with the grief of her mother's death. That backbone to the story seems to get lost in crushes, drug use, sex, bigotry, and music. Time skips along, huge chunks of life go missing, gulped away as the reader is introduced to a new series of moments that Keener has deemed noteworthy. Don't get me wrong, the author vividly describes all of these experiences with the kind of detail and craft most authors skip out on. But they just seem loose, barely connected by the wisps of grief courting the edges of the story.
I felt like the protagonist, Sarah, wasn't going anywhere. And, although I'm sure Sarah felt that way (especially because Keener liked to build paragraphs out of the questions wheeling through Sarah's mind), I didn't want to feel that way as a reader. Meanwhile, as aimless as Sarah seemed, I sometimes felt like Keener was just going through a recipe for "litfic novel." Here were the allusions to pop culture. Here were the repeating symbols (tunnels and funnels came up a lot). Here were the finely-crafted sentences describing the emotional heartbeats of a life-changing moment. After a while I got frustrated and just wanted the book to be over so I could move on to something that might have a few more surprises, a few imperfections, and not feel so contrived.
But it frustrated me. The prose was lovely; it was true. Keener has a talent for weaving a unique and evocative phrase. But I feel as if the story and its themes didn't match the depth of her writing skill.
Keener drives almost absent-mindedly through this tale of a teenage girl dealing with the grief of her mother's death. That backbone to the story seems to get lost in crushes, drug use, sex, bigotry, and music. Time skips along, huge chunks of life go missing, gulped away as the reader is introduced to a new series of moments that Keener has deemed noteworthy. Don't get me wrong, the author vividly describes all of these experiences with the kind of detail and craft most authors skip out on. But they just seem loose, barely connected by the wisps of grief courting the edges of the story.
I felt like the protagonist, Sarah, wasn't going anywhere. And, although I'm sure Sarah felt that way (especially because Keener liked to build paragraphs out of the questions wheeling through Sarah's mind), I didn't want to feel that way as a reader. Meanwhile, as aimless as Sarah seemed, I sometimes felt like Keener was just going through a recipe for "litfic novel." Here were the allusions to pop culture. Here were the repeating symbols (tunnels and funnels came up a lot). Here were the finely-crafted sentences describing the emotional heartbeats of a life-changing moment. After a while I got frustrated and just wanted the book to be over so I could move on to something that might have a few more surprises, a few imperfections, and not feel so contrived.