Customer Reviews

The Swimmer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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)

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.

This is quite a hard book to review. I did enjoy it, but recently there has been a trend amongst authors to write a book in segments with a different character taking up the story each time, and I am not sure that I really enjoy this. Sometimes it works but after a while books written in this style start to annoy me. Obviously other readers may not be affected by this or may even enjoy it, as with all things it is personal to the reader. That aside, this is a moving story. I have read and enjoyed Brixton Beach, the author has a very gentle way of writing. She does not go in for fast paced story telling, she is very slow and descriptive in her development of themes and characters. Her descriptive power is hugely evocative of places and I do like books that teach me about another culture and part of the world. I can see how others would give this 4 stars, but for me because of my particular taste as outlined above, that is the reason for my 3 stars.

Ria, poet, is living in a Suffolk village, in the house left to her by her uncle. Her brother, Jack, political activist, wants her to sell the house and split the proceeds with him. Their sibling relationship has been deeply troubled since the death of their father.

The normally peaceful village is aghast at the recent incidents of animals having their throats slit.

One swelteringly hot summer's evening Ria sees a swimmer in her stretch of the river. The swimmer emerges from the river, dresses, and walks through her garden. Another day they meet, and a relationship develops, despite a large difference in their ages and cultural backgrounds. Ben is from Sri Lanka, a Tamil, and is seeking political asylum in Britain, away from the persecution of Tamils back home.

There is an interesting interplay between the main characters and friends and villagers. When tragedy strikes it has long term repercussions for many.

A great read!

I have read other Roma Teame's books. I found this book very interesting about Suffolk, however the story is sad.

Unusual story with some lyrical prose about love and loss. Leaves you wanting more. Loved her other books too. Not a rom-com!

I have read all her books and there is no doubt Tearne is an excellent writer. The Swimmer is a well conceived plot and deals with some of the prsent political situation related to the story. I felt in the later part she has missed the puch and lost the grip in her story telling.

I have read two of Roma Tearne's previous novels so I was not expecting this to be a particularly joyful read. Never-the-less, the tragedy referred to in the book's blurb occurs so early on in the narrative that it left me reeling, wondering how it could redeem itself. I did manage a few tears of joy at the end but the majority of the book is truly sad. Having said that, I enjoyed it, but then I am a bit of a morbid reader.

The main character is 43 year old Ria who is a bit of a loner following the loss of her much loved father while she was still young. She has inherited his cottage on the Fens of Norfolk, where she is living alone, working as a poet, when she starts to be aware of a presence around her house. She is understandably nervous, given the recent killing of animals and suspicion of illegal immigrants in her area.
Ben is a young refugee from Sri Lanka, having escaped the purging of the Tamils by travelling in a lorry via Moscow. He is a qualified doctor in his home country but has had to work in Britain as a farm worker to survive.
Ria and Ben form an unlikely alliance, given their different backgrounds and huge difference in age - then the tragedy strikes.

There are a number of other vivid characters who are also introduced - Rias's bully of a brother and his family, Ben's mother, but most of all, Eric, an elderly farming man from the Fens who catches eels from the river at the end of Ria's garden and who has known her since she was a child. It is Eric who holds the whole story together, though at times he is a bit too good to be true.

Tearn is an excellent author on the themes of expatriation and the struggles of the Tamils in Sri Lanka but there is so much tragedy and death in the story, both past and present, that you'd have to be in a strong frame of mind to read this. It is, however, slightly lifted by the vivid descriptions of the harsh Norfolk countryside.

The audible version was well read by Patience Tomlinson. My only complaint would have been that she read the thoughts of Ben's Mother, Anula, with an English accent and then used a slight accent for her spoken word. I would have preferred all of this to have been accented, preferably by a native speaker.