Claire Fuller

Returning home to care for her aging father twelve years after her mother's disappearance, Flora discovers that before she went missing, her mother wrote letters to her father about their marriage and hid them among his thousands of books.

Swimming Lessons

Melissa Palmer

Book #41 Read in 2017
Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller

Flora's father Gil falls and he says it is because he saw his long-disappeared and presumed-dead wife Ingrid. Flora returns home to check on her father and to see if her mother has returned. Gil and Ingrid had a complicated marriage and the effects are lasting on Flora. This book was a decent read. I borrowed it from the public library.

Cheri McElroy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is the story of Ingrid and Richard, and their children Nan and Flora. About what we believe is the truth about our families, and about how little we sometimes know.

It’s a mystery, a look at family secrets, and an eerie, slow-burn, character-driven novel. This story will stick with me.

“It’s difficult to live with both hope and grief.” 

I have to admit that this sort of book and writing style will not appeal or suit to everyone. I had to put it down and pick it up several times to peak any sort of interest but Ingrid's letters got me hooked on what went wrong. 
The book is a character-driven novel about love leading to marriage that ultimately was in ruins. Flora and her father are living in the hope that Ingrid would come back while Nan has a more realistic response to the situation and has taken up her mother's place in all the twelve years of disappearance.

The book in itself was alright in the least. We never really explore the emotional aspects hiding within the story even with the use of several metaphors. With that being said, the characters never really grew for me. There were no major developments in their personality aside from the slow realization that Flora's memories were heavily clouded and her realizing that her dad wasn't quite what she made him out to be.
 
The letters were enjoyable. The transition of Gil being this charming professor to a compulsive cheater was what struck out for me. I kind of understood why Ingrid never left the relationship since she held on to the hope that they were okay and would overcome this. But after their marriage, they had no connection to speak of. Ingrid didn't want children but she couldn't have used birth control? She gave up so much for someone whom she didn't have an emotional connection to. (view spoiler)[ They never really talked even when Ingrid lost a child  (hide spoiler)]. He never really was there for her and used her for acquiring a story he never could have thought of by himself. 
The only thing I really felt for this book was intrigue to what happened with Ingrid and anger at her misfortune and Gil's acts.

 All books are created by the reader
I really liked the concept behind the running theme of how each reader interprets the book differently. The book left me with a strong message - no two readers read the same book. They define the plot and characters based on what they understand and draw from their experiences.

Chelsey

3/5 ⭐️ - swimming lessons is a story about a family who is troubled by grief and sadness. two sisters return to their childhood home to care for their father, who has an accident at the beginning of the book. the present day events are juxtaposed with letters written by the girls’ missing mother that describe the details of her life and past. overall it’s a heartwarming story on family but it’s not my favorite of claire fuller’s books. i failed to see the reason that the past needed to be told in letters and thought the story was a bit dull overall but not unreadable.

Allison Garber

Heather Margaret

Lindsy Rice

Patricia Nelson

Ali Angco

Lindsey B

Jerilynn Hallett 

Allison

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ENCORE AWARD 2018*** The second novel from the author of Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize and was a 2016 Richard and Judy Book Club Pick. 'Gil Coleman looked down from the window and saw his dead wife standing on the pavement below.' Gil's wife, Ingrid has been missing, presumed drowned, for twelve years. A possible sighting brings their children, Nan and Flora, home. Together they begin to confront the mystery of their mother. Is Ingrid dead? Or did she leave? And do the letters hidden within Gil's books hold the answer to the truth behind his marriage, a truth hidden from everyone including his own children? 'Thrilling, transporting, delicately realised and held together by a sophisticated sense of suspense...more than matches the power of Fuller's debut... Powerful, pleasing and pleasurable.' Sunday Times

Camilla Woodhouse

Sara Holman

Skye Sherman

Ingrid writes letters to her husband Gil about their life together. But instead of giving them to him, she hides each in the thousands of books Gil has collected. Despite their two daughters, despite their beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, despite Gil's talent as a writer, their marriage has been troubled. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach. Twelve years later her adult daughter Flora comes home to look after her injured father. Secretly, Flora has never believed that her mother is dead, and she starts asking questions, without realizing that the answers she's looking for are hidden in the books that surround her.

Francesca

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.

Swimming Lessons

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