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Swimming Lessons (Paperback)

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February 2017 Indie Next List


“With Swimming Lessons, Claire Fuller confirms her place as a writer of exceptional insight and warmth. This tale of a marriage, of a family, and especially of children bearing the brunt of the fallout of betrayals and abandonment, pulls you in and refuses to let you emerge from the lives of its characters until the tale is finished. Even then, it takes time to shake the spell the book creates. A wonderful follow-up to Our Endless Numbered Days, that explores similar themes through an entirely different story, Swimming Lessons will be a great book for fans of Fuller's first novel and will bring her new fans as well.”
— Anmiryam Budner (E), Main Point Books, Bryn Mawr, PA

Description


An exhilarating literary mystery, Swimming Lessons keeps readers guessing until the final page.


Disenchanted by the life in which she’s found herself, Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their passionate and troubled marriage. She hides them, unread, in the thousands of books Gil has collected over the years. Then she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two young daughters, Flora and Nan.


Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and his unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed Ingrid drowned, returns home to care for her father and investigate her mother’s disappearance. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a turbulent marriage and the dangerous fault lines that remain.



About the Author


Claire Fuller is the author of Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; and Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.


www.clairefuller.co.uk


Praise For…


Extraordinarily smart and psychologically shrewd . . . You will be kept guessing until the final penetrating sentence.
— Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of THE PARIS WIFE

A deeply moving read, with a mystery that keeps you turning pages.
— Oprah.com

A perfect book club pick.
— Book Riot

Delicious! Claire Fuller's Swimming Lessons is a kind of anti-cozy cozy mystery.

— NPR

A 'choose your own adventure’ story for adults . . . A haunting, motivating, and fantastic read.
— Steph Opitz, Book of the Month Club

Eloquent, harrowing, raw . . . sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
— Kirkus Reviews

A tantalizing mystery.
— NYLON

Beautiful . . . [Fuller] delves deeply to examine the legacies of a flawed and passionate marriage.
— Booklist, Starred Review

Saving the best for last with revelations and surprises, Fuller’s well-crafted, intricate tale captures the strengths and shortcomings of ordinary people to show how healing is possible by confronting the darkest places.
— Library Journal, Starred Review

Product Details
ISBN: 9781941040935
ISBN-10: 1941040934
Publisher: Tin House Books
Publication Date: January 9th, 2018
Pages: 354
Language: English