The Swimmer
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Review
Praise for Brixton Beach:
'Tearne at her lyrical best. A heartfelt and timely lament for the Sri Lankan tragedy' Chris Cleave, author of ‘The Other Hand’
‘Rich and satisfying’ The Times
‘An ambitious, lyrical novel, distinguished by its refusal to offer false consolation’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Richly characterised, elegantly modulated and deeply moving’ Daily Mail
‘A vividly sensitive writer’ Independent
‘Three remarkable novels’ Guardian
Praise for Mosquito and Bone China:
‘The prose is as polished and pictorial as an intricate piece of china’ Independent on Sunday
‘One of those rich, nourishing family sagas that seizes the imagination.’ The Times
‘Mosquito…announced a fresh lyrical talent’ Guardian
‘Readers of this novel cannot fail to be moved’ Spectator
Product Description
A gripping, captivating novel about love, loss and what home really means.
Forty-three year old Ria is used to being alone. As a child, her life changed forever with the death of her beloved father and since then, she has struggled to find love.That is, until she discovers the swimmer.
Ben is a young illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka who has arrived in Norfolk via Moscow. Awaiting a decision from the Home Office on his asylum application, he is discovered by Ria as he takes a daily swim in the river close to her house. He is twenty years her junior and theirs is an unconventional but deeply moving romance, defying both boundaries and cultures – and the xenophobic residents of Orford. That is, until tragedy occurs.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Home is where the heart is,
By Annabel Gaskell "gaskella2" (Nr Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Swimmer (Hardcover)
The village of Orford, near Aldeburgh in Suffolk is not used to foreigners. Someone's killing animals by slitting their throats, and everyone is concerned about terrorists in their midst.Ria, a poet, lives in relative isolation in her late father's cottage by the coast in Suffolk - it's home. Eric, a neighbouring farmer, is like a surrogate father to her, having taken her eel-fishing since she was a child. Now single, she enjoys being on her own with with few distractions apart from her bothersome brother and his family arriving for an annual trip. Jack is always on at her to sell the house, so he can have his half, but Ria won't - they've feuded over this for years. Then one day she sees the swimmer... Ben is an illegal immigrant - a Tamil from Sri Lanka who came to the area via Moscow. He's living and working on a nearby farm while his application for asylum is being processed. Ben is a medic who plays jazz piano and despite an eighteen year difference in their ages, they fall for each other and begin tentative steps towards a relationship - then tragedy happens. I won't tell you any more of the story, but as the book moves on we meet other women in Ben's life including his mother Anula, and they take on the tale. With her artist's eye, Roma has conjured up a compelling vision of the landscape once again. In her previous book, Brixton Beach, the Sri Lankan coast came to life, and the same is so here for the rivers, marshes and pebbly beaches of Suffolk - she has a great affinity to seascapes. The characters are strongly drawn too, but none more so than Eric - who is a rock. He understands; he has his own sadness, but uses it to help others, and he provides continuity throughout the book. This is a sad book, yet there is hope too. I enjoyed it immensely, and in my hour of need would wish to have someone like Eric to be there for me. The story highlights the frustrations and distrust experienced by illegal immigrants who have had to flee their own country, definitely something to make one think. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Ben and other asylum-seekers arriving hidden in a lorry. But he had to escape Jaffna or risk being rounded up and shot in the still ongoing war in his home country. Somehow though, you sense that this dramatic move has set him free to find a new home - which is another theme weaving through this book. This was an super read and I can highly recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A profound meditation on grief, forgiveness and renewal,
By
This review is from: The Swimmer (Kindle Edition)
The backdrop to this novel is the landscape of the County of Suffolk with its rivers and marshes, bordering the East Coast of England, lovingly described by Tearne with a painter's eye. She tells us about the eels which inhabit the rivers, "the length of bootlaces and the colour of green glass". The Kindle edition enables one to search the book, and I can tell you that there are seventy references to eels here! The eel is a "swimmer" which migrates from the Sargasso Sea to the the rivers of Europe, but the principal swimmer in the book is Ben, a young Sri Lankan man who also ends up in Suffolk (No, he didn't swim all the way). Ben is a refugee or illegal immigrant depending on one's point of view.Tearne is never one to shirk a difficult theme, and the theme of this book is grief, and how one copes with it or does not cope with it. There are four deaths in the book, and at least four people grieving for these deaths. A young girl grieves for her father, a middle-aged woman grieves for her lover, another young girl grieves for her mother, and an old man grieves for two deaths. Out of this painful material Tearne has fashioned a compelling story. The book is in three sections like a symphony: An idyllic first section, a slow and painful second one, and a surprising and moving finale. If you are into serious reading, don't miss this.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully written,
By
This review is from: The Swimmer (Paperback)
The Swimmer is a beautifully written novel by Roma Tearne set in the small English town of Orford in Suffolk. It's the story of Ria, a forty-three-year-old poet, and Ben, a young refugee from Sri Lanka.Ria is a single woman who lives alone in Eel House, a cottage which once belonged to her uncle. She's quite happy to be there on her own; if she needs company there's Eric, an older man from the neighbouring farm, and her brother and his family visit occasionally too - although these visits aren't entirely welcome. Sometimes, though, life can be lonely for Ria. After a few failed relationships in the past she's almost given up hope of finding someone to love...until she discovers Ben swimming in the river behind her house. Ben, a Tamil refugee, left Sri Lanka to escape from the violence there. His asylum application has not yet been processed and so he's living and working in Britain as an illegal immigrant. Although he's eighteen years younger than Ria and from an entirely different background, the two begin to fall in love. I really liked the first section of this book and enjoyed watching Ria and Ben's relationship slowly develop. I thought the rest of the novel would continue in the same way, but then something happened which I wasn't prepared for. The plot started to go in another direction, there was a new narrator to get used to, and I felt as if I was reading a completely different book to the one I had been expecting. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though; the second part of the book was interesting, moving and relevant and the narrator was a more passionate person than Ria. The third, and shortest, section of the book also switches narrator and again took me by surprise. Although I found the third narrator difficult to like, I thought seeing things from this person's point of view helped to pull the story together and set up a perfect ending to the book. I was impressed by Roma Tearne's wonderfully descriptive writing and the way she portrayed the hot summer days in Orford and the Suffolk landscape with its marshlands and rivers. I particularly liked the references to the eels in the rivers which migrate from the Sargasso Sea ('swimmers', like Ben). But at times there was too much description, too much detail, which made the story move at a very slow pace. I was pleased to find that I enjoyed this book because before I started it I wasn't sure if it would be for me. I can imagine that if you've read a lot of other novels about immigration and refugees you might find this book unoriginal and contrived, but I haven't read much fiction on this subject so The Swimmer did leave me with a few things to think about.
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