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Swimming Home

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Swimming Home

By: Deborah Levy
Narrated by: Sophie Ward
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Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, read by Sophie Ward.

A poet, his wife, her daughter and their friends arrive at the French Riviera. The prospect of a long hot summer stretches ahead of them. At their villa, they find a body in the swimming pool.

But this body is very much alive. It is Kitty Finch: self-proclaimed botanist with lurid green fingernails, avid poetry fan, walking naked out of the water and straight into the centre of their holiday.

Why is she there? What does she want from them? And why does the poet's wife invite this beautiful young woman to remain?

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Fiction Swimming Marriage
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loved this audio book. well read. superb deborah levy scintillates again. dream of blue sugar mice

excellent

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not my favourite Levy, but as I love, love everything else that's not a criticism.

amazing first novel

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It's probably a sign of intellectual weakness on my part but I really hated this. They are literary concepts of characters, you never really feel they are people so much as metaphors. No-one has any agency. Everyone is just floating around in a sea of semi-ironic references to Great Literature. It's a interesting concept - how will all these very different characters respond to this chaotic addition, and gosh they really could be interesting characters if they were ever developed. Maybe it's just because it's so short? I don't know. I found the narration style made the whole thing even more dreamy and unreal, also the repeated odd (to me) pronunciation of cotyledon was quite jarring. Didn't do it for me.

Not my cup of tea

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