Night Swimmers

Emotionally intelligent, minute, humane, debut novel about a family unravelling in the wake of the death of their baby. The focus is on the dad (Evan) who has a history in alcoholism. At the start of the novel he is more or less evicted from home, taking refuge in a small village on the North Irish coast, and then gets caught up by the covid19 lock-down. At some stage his wife, a nurse who works around the clock locating protective gear for health staff, sends their deaf son to the village.

By then the man has already tried to commit suicide. He is saved by a weird character, Grace, a 50 year old mother earth, who swims naked at night, and potters around in the dunes and along the beach with her dog, fishing and collecting stuff. She show more has a history of being abused: it is said that as a young girl she was abducted, kidnapped, and kept in London, until such time that her fearless mom went to London to ‘retrieve’ her. Grace looks down on ‘townies’ like Evan. But this does not stop her from saving him during a clumsy attempt to drown himself.

When the deaf boy Luca arrives, dumped by his busy mom, the dynamic changes. In no time the boy attaches himself to Grace and Becky, the shopkeeper. When Abbie, the ingenious ‘can do’ tech girl arrives, another swing is given to the dynamic. She initially gate-crashes at the summer house of her mom Grace to flee her on-line studies, not knowing that Evan and Luca stay there now. Abbie and Evan gel straightaway. The stage is set for two major events – first a search and rescue operation when Grace’s boat goes missing and Luca is assumed to have taken it; and second, after locating the kid, his mum and dad seemingly reconciling, after which Evan engages in the inevitable – he goes night swimming with Grace.

Gosh, this is such a crafty, emotionally layered novel. Makes you wonder what else Maguire is capable of. show less

IN A NUTSHELL
'Night Swimmers' is slight from a plot point of view but it's also wonderful. It walks the line of dealing with grief and loss in a way that offers hope, with no guarantees and kindness with no second thoughts but avoids schmaltzy sentimentality. The dialogue is spot on and the prose has the lightness of touch of a simple line drawing that captures the essence of something in a few strokes.

The cover of 'Night Swimmers' caught my attention but it was the opening paragraphs that made me buy the book:

"SHE HEARD THEM BEFORE she saw them, a cluster of brightly coloured chickens, fussing at the water’s edge, flapping and clucking.

‘Silly bitches,’ she said.

Treading water, blinking the salt from her eyes, she watched them show more for a moment. They were folding towels, stowing phones in yoga-bags, pulling off sandals. They were toeing the water, expressing dismay at its temperature. They were coming in, now. She could hear the giggles and the tiny little screams of surprise as the water met their smooth white feet. They wore dinky little swim-hats and their shoulders were hunched and pale and narrow.

She flipped herself over and ducked down, down, down under the surface, letting the sparkle of her bubbles soothe her, feeling the cold rush over her skin, her belly, her thighs. A cool hand. She felt the tick of her pulse grow heavy as she dived into the dark, but kept going, kept swimming and wriggling downwards until her heart became a knocking in her throat and temples, forcing her to turn back, push to the surface again, pull fresh air in and blink and drip and breathe and look out to sea and try to pretend she was on her own.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ she grumbled, lying back crossly and kicking great columns of water up into the air, letting it rain down again, delicious. She could have stayed for ages longer but the shrieking and splashing carried out across the still plane of water in the bay – her bay – and jangled her, spoilt it all. No one ever came all the way around here, to this pebbly, inhospitable place. They put up their windbreakers and their deckchairs and the rest of their shit back around the corner on the main beach where the sand lay golden and inviting and cool and bright, and left this place for her.

Bugger, she thought."

It was a good decision. 'Night Swimmers' was a joy to read. The story flowed effortlessly, less like a plot and more like life happening to you. The language was precise without feeling overwrought. The imagery was powerful without pushing the story to one side like an over-loud soundtrack. The characters were relatable but intriguig because their depths, relationships and histories were revealed slowly and indirectly. The dialogue was spot on. Most of all, I liked that the people and the place felt part of the same cloth -one could not be fully understood without the context of the other.

The story's plot is slight but the lives described within it are richly textured and beautifully drawn. The 'Night Swimmers' uses an unexpected COVID lockdown to bring together two people who have little in common except that their lives have been fractured by traumas that have left them tangled in the nets of loss and grief. One is a life-long resident of the village whose story, or a version of it, is known to everyone who lives there. One is an outsider, who seems to be a tourist but who is really in a self-imposed exile from his former life. One is dealing with emotional scars that are decades old. One is still staggering under the weight of a recent trauma. Each of them is trying to find a path that offers hope of future worth having.

In other hands, this set-up might have turned into a life-affirming romance or a series of Hallmark moments of mutual redemption. In Roisin Maguire's hands, it became an exploration of grief and the possibility of hope.

For me, one of the strengths of 'Night Swimmers' was that it showed the need for solitude, for quiet, for the freedom to be alone, not as something dysfunctional that needs to be fixed but as something that can bring healing and peace. There is a joy to swimming alone in the dark of night hat is not about an inability to face the sun. It allows for a difference between solitude loneliness

Grief is as much a character in this book as the people and the landscape. Like the other characters, the nature of grief is disclosed gradualy and indirectly. The story spoke to me about grief by immersing me in how the two main characters experience it. Grief is shown as akin to swimming through the cold dark depths with the same temptation to stop swimming, give in to the cold and drown. The gradual emergence of hope is akin to recovering from the deep cold of the sea by slowly raising the temperature of the shower water.

'Night Swimmers' is a gem of a book that will resonate with anyone who hears solitude's call and has known grief's grip. show less

Evan und Lorna haben ihre Tochter verloren. Die beiden gehen mit dem Verlust auf unterschiedliche Weise um und entfremden sich so immer mehr. Daher will Evan eine Auszeit in einem kleinen Dorf an der irischen Küste verbringen. Er mietet ein Cottage von Grace, die damit ihren Unterhalt finanziert. Aber auch hier bleibt Evan in seinen Erinnerungen und seiner Trauer gefangen. Aus der geplanten kurzen Auszeit werden wegen des Corona-Lockdowns Monate.
Mir hat der wunderbare Schreibstil der Autorin Roisin Maguire sehr gut gefallen. Die Geschichte verläuft lange Zeit sehr ruhig. Die Gegend um Ballybrady ist sehr atmosphärisch dargestellt. Ich konnte mir die felsige Küste und das kalte raue Meer gut vorstellen.
Auch die Charaktere sind show more eigenwillig und authentisch dargestellt. Evan hat nach dem Tod seiner Tochter den Boden unter den Füßen verloren. Er trinkt zu viel und hat sich von seiner Familie entfernt. Lorna macht es ihm auch nicht leicht und sein Sohn Luca leidet natürlich auch unter der Situation. So mietet er sich bei Grace ein, einer Person, die abweisend und ruppig ist und den Kontakt zu anderen Menschen meidet. Auch ihr hat es das Schicksal nicht leicht gemacht. Dann bringt Lorna Luca zu ihrem Mann. Lucas Anwesenheit verändert so nach und nach die Beziehung zwischen Evan und Grace und auch den anderen Dorfbewohnern. Auch Luca fühlt sich in Ballybrady wohl, denn man traut ihm etwas zu, obwohl er gehörlos ist. Mit der Zeit fügt sich Evan in die Dorfgemeinschaft ein und erkennt, was im Leben wirklich von Bedeutung ist.
Die Dramatik im dritten Teil dieses Romans hätte es für mich nicht unbedingt gebraucht, da mich die Geschichte auch in ihren ruhigen Teilen gepackt hat.
Eine schöne und emotionale Geschichte mit Tiefgang, die mir gut gefallen hat. show less

Ein kluges, ruhiges und berührendes Buch. Wohl eines der Besten in diesem Jahr.
Die Charaktere, die Schilderung der Landschaft, der Stimmung und der Gefühle... Und das alles verpackt in eine zu tiefst hoffnungsvolle Geschichte.