Swimming Lesson by Claire Fuller is about family dysfunction, flailing marriages, disappearances and dying on one's own terms despite efforts from loved ones.
Letters did play a prominent role in the telling of this tale, but they were letters unsent, letters possibly undiscovered. The novel alternates between the present after (father) Gil's accident and Nan and Flora's discovery that Gil is dying and letters that (mother) Ingrid wrote to Gil years earlier, leading up to her disappearance. Ingrid writes each letter and then hides in one of the many - seriously many - books that Gil collects.
I love Fuller's use of language. It's lyrical but not in an overly flowery way. I love the use of letter writing as a way to pull in another narrator. And I loved that at the end of each letter, there was a note into what book the letter was hidden in. There was always some connection. As a book lover, I appreciated that.
But that's about all I loved. There were no characters that I found at all likable. Not that I need to like the characters in order to like the book. They're all caricatures of common characters found in other books. The older sister taking on the mom role. The younger sister never growing up. A lecherous older man. A young woman who ignores the signs. The best friends. In this book in particular, none of the characters show any growth, except perhaps Ingrid. Maybe.
What was most disappointing to me was the ending. Yes, readers learn the whole back story. But I wanted more. I wanted a different type of discovery. I wanted things that I'm not going to write about here because I don't want to spoil this book for anyone else.
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