Vintage Contemporaries / Swimming

the sleepy, button-nosed first. Day and night mean nothing to me. Leonard is trying to think; can t.We re at the Quaker Aquatic Center waiting for my first aqua baby class to begin. My mother s sitting at the edge of the pool, holding a shivering Bron, who s studying me quietly, an intent expression on her oval face. She won t get in and no one s making her. I grab Leonard s lips and pull; he taps my hand with one finger, whispers: Stop. I can t walk yet; he has to carry me everywhere and it s starting to hurt his lower back. He yelled at my mother yesterday. What in the hell are you feeding her? And she yelled back, hard. The same damn formula we gave Bron. I look over at my mother; Bron has moved behind her and is holding on to her neck with a hand that suggests possession. She s got one thumb in her mouth, eyes burning holes in my flabby face. I kick Leonard in the gut; he grunts. I jump a little bit, pointing toward Bron, gurgle, then speak. I m trying to say: She means me harm.Leonard says: Shoosh now; the nice lady is talking.I don t know what the hell he s talking about so I kick him in the gut again, grab one of the long hairs that sprout from his eyebrows, pull.There s a lady coming at me with a mermaid puppet on one hand. The mermaid is saying goo things, but Bron has destroyed the joy of puppets for me forever. I try to get away from it by weeping dramatically as I crawl up Leonard s shoulder and he scrambles to hold on. The lady is hailing me, but I don t know her face, so I won t look at it. She s wearing a swimsuit with a skirt attached and a necklace with a bright yellow plastic smiley face in the middle. Leonard bounces me up and down. I wipe puppet from mind, swallow sobs, lunge for the smiley face. Leonard almost loses me, says: Whoooahhhh there, a sharp satellite of

on land is inspiring, a must-read for anyone who has, at one time or another, found life to be a challenge. Hudson Valley News
 
Keegan s writing is beautiful, often stream-of-consciousness, and smart. . . . Pip is like the female Holden Caulfield, pointing out the ridiculous aspects of life, but secretly harboring a deep sadness about not being more entrenched in it. Bookreporter
 
Nicola Keegan has pulled off a coup with her first novel. Swimming is as entertaining as it is deeply moving, a story of loss that is against all odds also a jubilation. Lauren Groff, author of The Monsters of Templeton
 
Think: velocity. Think: a girl moving through adolescence at breakneck speed as she sloughs off anguish (her mother s depression) and heartbreak (the deaths of her sister and father) to become a gold-medal winning Olympic swimmer. . . . [A] sleek-as-a-porpoise debut novel. O, The Oprah Magazine
 
I loved Swimming. It s the most original novel I ve read all year. I can t get Pip s voice out of my mind. Give yourself a treat this summer read this book. Judy Blume
 
Engaging. . . . An accomplished debut, as much about swimming as about what it takes to win and lose. Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
Nicola Keegan s prose is filled with inventive riffs to draw out the poignant turbulences of her heroine, both in the water and out. Reading the book becomes itself like a long, sinuous surge through the pool. . . . A classy fiction about the tenuous relationship of worldly success to the intimate self. The Independent (London)
 
Keegan has caught not only the world of competitive swimming, but the problems professional athletes face when their careers end. . . . The prose is graceful and rapid, as if Keegan set out to write sentences as flowing as the medium she writes of. January magazine
 
Keegan s shimmering, fluid prose is outwardly playful, yet this is a seriously well-crafted novel. The Guardian (London)
 
If Jane Bowles and Gerard Manley Hopkins had a lovechild, she might just possibly write as gloriously as Nicola Keegan. Swimming is a novel for people who love donut holes, or the dead, or dogs, or nuns, or fat people, or world class athletes, or the English language, or pretty much anything. It should be read, re-read, dreamed about, quoted to friends, and enacted as a shimmery odd hilarious mystery play. Swimming is simply magnificent. Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances