The Swimmer (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

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.

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.

The Swimmer deals with a lonely poet living in Suffolk who falls for a visitor to her river. Unfortunately the peace of the countryside has been shattered by a series of grizzly animal killings. Suspicion falls on immigrants, fuelling the fire of the Far Right.

Ria is a forty-something virtual recluse living in her aunt and uncle's house in the countryside in Suffolk. Divorced and estranged from her brother, Ria lives a lonely, but peaceful life as she tries to finish her latest anthology. She has suffered a lot, with the premature death of her beloved father, unable to properly grieve as her family preferred to keep their stiff upper lip. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of resentment. Her younger brother is a bully prone to mood swings, and he is especially unhappy that Ria won't sell the house, and thus is depriving him of his share of the cash.

Ben is the titular swimmer, an illegal immigrant working locally while he waits for his paperwork to come through. He travelled all the way from war-torn Sri Lanka in the hope of a better life. His life is like many immigrants, working as a labourer despite being highly educated, and missing home all the while.

Ria notices that food in her house is missing and at first blames the cleaner until, one night, she sees Ben swimming across the river at the bottom of her property. The unlikely pair strike up a friendship, the lonely poet and the foreign farmhand. Both are educated and artistic, she writes while he plays the piano. They seem to fill a void in each other's life, a connection than transcends age or nationality.

If life were simple, then the book would end here, but their idyll is threatened by Ria's brother and the unsolved crimes. As you read, you hope for peace for the characters, for themselves, but making peace with the past is easier said than done. I did enjoy The Swimmer, with its topical themes and almost local setting (my parents live across the water in Essex). The only drawback is a bit of a rushed ending, while the reader appreciates the closure the ending brings, I was left wanting more.

(I would give this 7/10, but no half stars here)