Deborah Levy is one of these authors I dislike just a tad less than I like (this is the third book of her I have been reading). There are some brilliant ideas and striking poetry, but so much slush to go through to get there. For some reason, the events and thoughts she describes seem convoluted to me. I don’t know if it means to represent inner human complexity, or if it’s trying to protect a plot from too early a reveal, but it obscures whole scenes, and it somewhat feels like following the point of a chatty drunk: sometimes there is a point, sometimes not, sometimes you’re just not in the same headspace.

That said, it is, somewhat, worth it (at least, I keep coming back to it). I can see the intent, and I respect it.

In Swimming home (a possible reference to the 1968 movie The Swimmer: they share the same general atmosphere of existential doubt), the English family of a poet and their friends spend the summer around a swimming pool in the south of France. Kitty Finch (young, deranged and beautiful) crashes the holidays, and is invited to stay. Everyone desires something without admitting it, and everyone works at making their wish come true, plausible deniability included. Tragedy is afoot, and everything eventually happens as usual — adultery, death, the end of innocence, and somehow everyone gets what they wanted, just not exactly how they envisioned it (if they had dared envision it).