The Swimming Pool: From the author of ITV’s Our House starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton

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This review first appeared on our blog, where we also chat to the author about writing, lidos and more... http://www.tripfiction.com/thriller-s... Swimming and reading have a lot in common: both are solitary pursuits, escapes into different worlds and different kinds of freedom. Some of the swimmers below are chasing bodily liberation in the water; others want to escape their dry-land lives or to recover lost memories. My protagonist Martha is challenging herself to recover her strength. The constraints of her teaching career, her drab flat in the wrong part of Elm Hill along with the habitual preachiness of her maths teacher husband Ed make Natalie vulnerable to the attentions of local celeb and sophisticate Lara, who lives in the best street in Elm Hill (overlooking the lido), speaks in a louche throaty drawl (well, she did in the audio book) and dresses like a diva. In contrast Natalie is plainish with a large birthmark, which has made her insecure about her appearance. One question he refuses to engage with is whether he is still pigeonholed as a gay writer. This was the canard that followed him on his promotional tour for The Line Of Beauty, when interviewers asked whether his gayness defined him as a writer and every news piece was headlined, "Gay writer wins Booker". "I have a feeling it's changed," he says. "I spent 20 years politely answering the question, 'How do you feel when people categorise you as a gay writer?' and I'm not going to do it this time round. It's no longer relevant." Will goes to an exhibition of photographs by Staines. The theme is soft-core homo-erotica. He is surprised to find Gavin there. Talking with Staines, he discovers that he and Charles have produced three pornographic films of the type that play in the cinema where Will first had sex with Phil.

I saw this book and it immediately drew me in. The front cover is so enticing and it sounded an intriguing book. Nat is soon seduced by a whiff of decadence and danger and finds her life, and her family’s, becoming more and more entangled with Lara’s family and her vaguely immoral social set. The two women forge a tight friendship and their two teenage daughters Molly and Georgia also become friends with the former idolising the older and prettier latter.Last April, I read and reviewed Louise Candlish's last novel; The Sudden Departure of the Frasers . I really enjoyed that book, a mix of darkness and suburban living. In The Swimming Pool,

At the match, Will meets Bill: a man he knows from the Corry. Bill is a weightlifter; a large muscular man who coaches teenage boxers. Trapped inside his body, Bill seems a fearful man. He is devoted to Nantwich, his patron, and to the boys he coaches. He is also carrying a torch for Phil. The Code is designed, among other things, to meet the health challenge of one of the greatest threats that the sector has to deal with – the chlorine-resistant pathogen Cryptosporidium. I didn't like the structure of the book (flitting about from past to present), nor the horrible status-obsessed, and shallow characters, nor the setting and definitely not the weak conclusion. And let's not speak about the tired and long-winded writing. There are very few modern books that can get away with this, but in Rinehart I adore it for some reason, and that's the "had I but known" style! "If I had only known what was to happen next." "The next day revealed my mistake." "That night was the last time I would...." It's so dumb, but in Rinehart, I lap it up and love it! FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/10/2018 Suburban, exotic, utterly private, boisterously public, a threat or a blessing: 'The Swimming Pool in Photography' This 1962 photograph of Blandine Fagedet, winner of a women's diving contest, plunging into the Piscine Georges-Vallery in Paris, is reproduced from

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After all, the human individual universally has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a chin. It is the assemblage of these features that counts, and believe me Jude's counted.

As I said before, the novel is well structured, but at times, it’s too much structured that it looks artificial. The transition between the various timelines seems forced by the need to follow a pattern rather than giving the impression of being spontaneous within the development of the plot, and this distracted me several times from immersing myself into reading. The Swimming Pool is a decent novel and it's interesting to read about a world of enforced social roles and glamor that no longer exists. Although I would probably drop it down to 3.5 stars. This is the second book I've read by Louise Candlish and she has a highly readable style that pulls you right in. However the storyline in this instance is less compelling than in "The Sudden Departure of the Frasers". It takes a very long time to get going. The tension simmers along but not a lot happens until the final third of the book. In the final third there are pleasing twists and discoveries, but you have to be patient to get to them. I suspect that Candlish realised this problem and that's why she added the prologue which is (minor spoiler, minor spoiler) highly misleading and really annoyed me when I realized how it fitted into the story. A lighthearted, conversational history, with emphasis on the challenges women once faced just getting in the water, and the “swimming suffragettes” who defied genteel disapproval to claim the right to do so. I wonder if, with the new novel done, he feels bereaved. "Normally, I do have a brief but acute sort of depression when I finish a book, which is to do with saying goodbye to this place you've been inhabiting. But I was so desperate to get this thing off that I seem to have escaped that." He has a deep, drawly voice – so deep he used to be known as Basso Profundo when he worked at the Times Literary Supplement in the 80s – and a hesitant, donnish manner, but his brown eyes sparkle behind his glasses, and he laughs a great deal, managing to take himself very seriously and at the same time not in the least seriously.I realised early on that Molly was slightly different, and I don't feel its a spoiler to say that she has aquaphobia, a fear of being in water, or even being splashed. She has had various treatments for the condition but nothing has worked, and swimming lover Natalie just wishes Molly would overcome her fear. From the diaries, Will learns that Nantwich has been to Egypt and then returned to London, where he met with Ronald Firbank: an extraordinary portrait of effete decrepitude, camp and alcoholic. activityBookingConfirmationUrl":"/content/centerparcs/uk/en/jcr:content.activityBookingConfirmation.json", However tension is simmering. We know from the prologue and also from the sub-plot, set a few weeks in the future, that drama is not far away. We know that Natalie has secrets from her past that she hasn't even told her husband. We sense, even if Natalie doesn't, that Lara's dazzling attentions are too good to be true. What we don't know is where the danger will come from. Will it comes from Molly's phobia? From Natalie's past? From Lara's hidden motivations? Or somewhere else entirely?

After reading the author's previous novel The Frasers, I thought I'd finish this one as well to compare as they both have a similar plot. Normal, boring woman gets involved with charismatic rich woman and shit goes down storyline. And she lives with her brother in what once was (before the crash) her formerly-well-off family's summer home in the country; their sister Judith has years ago married very well and gone off to take her particular brand of spoiled beauty to the social columns.It was a good story, but I struggled with keeping up with the different time scales throughout it. The ending was good, with an unexpected twist, but I did find that it took a bit too long to get to it, with the middle of the story a bit too long and drawn out for me. Natalie and Molly though at the start of the summer make friends with the far more glamorous Channings, who were instrumental in the re-opening of the lido, and turn into key players in this whole story. The majority of the story takes place over a three month period of the summer, and the time line does jump around slightly. Aside from the prologue, “The Swimming Pool” brings you into the life of Natalie, a normal woman with a husband and a teenage daughter, who lives an extraordinary experience: make friends with Lara Channing, a local celebrity. She is thrown into an artificial environment that attracts her more and more, leading her to overlook her old friends and family. You can also book a session by coming along to one of our sports centresand using the public iPad in reception.