Swimming by Nicola Keegan

Swimming by Nicola Keegan
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Category: General Fiction
Reviewer: Trish Simpson-Davis
Summary: Nicola Keegan's first novel deals with an American teenager who swims to escape her horrible family. It works well as fiction, although aficionados of competitive swimming may be a little disappointed by such a lacksadaisical champion.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 320	Date: July 2009
Publisher: Chatto and Windus
ISBN: 978-0701182847
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Swimming is an ambitious project, spanning fifteen years or so of an Olympic medallist's career. I was surprised to find from her You Tube video that Nicola Keegan didn't have an international competitive background in swimming herself. To imagine a micro-world in such convincing detail is no mean feat for a first-time author.

It took me a while to latch onto this particular swathe of life. I was irritated by the picture of a young child on the cover which didn't seem to relate to the story of a young woman in her teens and twenties inside. Perhaps the misty goggles and trapped hair have a significance I've missed.

We meet Philomena as a talented, pre-pubescent teenager. Her emotional energy is focused on her relationships with her sisters and parents, rather than any Olympic dreams. Water provides an oasis of sensory bliss for the gangly girl caught between disciplinarian Catholic schooling and an unhappy home life.

It is family conflict that pulses the story along so strongly. When her bedroom-sharing, perfectionist sister develops anorexia, the family lapses into substrates of non-communication. The girls use scowls to challenge one another in antagonism; their speech is stilted and laconic with obscenities. The family holiday in Paris eases no-one's problems. I thought it a well-observed emotional landscape.

At times I wondered about Mena's emotions, and whether they were reflected by the stilted writing or the limited by the author's imagination. Occasionally the terse writing and unconventional layout for speech completely lost me and I'd have to backtrack to discover who said what – editors please note.

I don't honestly think the family difficulties described here would engender sufficient self-confidence for Philomena to train and win at elite level. Parents, in the UK at least, have to be super-supportive and affluent for their offspring to stand any chance. I didn't really believe Mom and Leonard have the emotional resources to be swimming parents. However, the plot line works well as psychological fiction; swimming is primarily a background to family crises in the early part of the book.

Philomena has to fight to train with a minor team rather than the priest delegated as school coach. She is unknown when she breaks national and Kansas records at the state meet. Taken on by supercoach E. Mankovitz and his team, she is geared up to compete at international level. For me, this is when the book takes off as Mena copes with team-mates, training, diet, amenorrhea, college study, boyfriends. She eventually develops the attitudes and motivation to win races and thereafter wants to stay at the top for as long as possible.

If there's a part that's downplayed to the point of unreality, I think it is Mena's reaction to success. Winning an Olympic medal is not an everyday occurrence , even for American swim stars. The general public may trivialize Olympic achievement, but not so swimmers (pick up any issue of Swimming Times if you don't believe me), who are hugely encouraged by Personal Bests and international placings. However, the feeling for life in this particular fast lane is so superficially convincing, I'd like to find out what contemporaries Sharron Davies or Duncan Goodhew made of the descriptions of team relations.

Demotivated athletes who fail to make Olympic teams – let alone Olympic medals – may doubt the value of the time spent training. What price then, a medallist who feels there is no purpose to her life apart from swimming? This is a book to widen horizons and beg a few questions of the reader.

The Bookbag would like to thank the publishers for sending this book.

Another newcomer who writes well about the disintegration of people and families is Nell Leyshon. I thoroughly recommend Devotion.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Swimming by Nicola Keegan at Amazon.com.

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