Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the first Man Booker short-listed book that I struggled with (bare in mind I haven’t read Will Self’s Umbrella which I’m expecting to be the second). More of a novella that a novel, the clunky text, maybe to contrast against the poet’s prose or to highlight the disturbed emotions of the characters, made it a chore to read. The words didn’t have a rhythm and felt as jarring as someone trying to make sense of my stammer; it kept making me aware of the narrator more than the content.
There was some nice imagery, such as the rain, but for me this was just a so-so read.