SWIMMER: An Outstanding Debut Literary Fiction Novel About a World-Class Athlete - Softcover

Broady, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006551971 ISBN 13: 9780006551973

Publisher: Flamingo, 2000

Synopsis

She swims into the medals and then into oblivion – a sensuous, searing, compact debut from an outstanding new British writer.

This is a striking, supple and direct debut from a new English writer that both promises an exceptionally exciting future and provides an unusual, accomplished and saleable debut. It’s a character piece, charting the life of a girl who becomes besotted with butterflies and swimming on the same holiday when an infant, then grows up to become a world-class swimmer before, at 19, obsolescence overtakes her with disorienting haste… If taken on its own terms – as an intense and focused portrait – it is simply staggering; a miniature, but a perfect one. It is stuffed with gorgeously apt and fresh imagery and has tremendous verve about it. It reads, in fact, like a race, as it should.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Broady lives and works in Yorkshire. His astonishing debut, Swimmer, was the fruit of Littlewoods’ largesse. He has also written and published some poetry and short stories in, amongst others, ‘The London Magazine’, ‘Poetry Now’, ‘Sofa’, ‘Printer’s Devil’, ‘The Big Issue’, ‘Artscene’ and ‘The Dalesman’.

From the Back Cover

"A skewed fairy tale, a hymn to water… Broady's descriptions of swimming are supple, fluid and memorable."
THE TIMES

"'You don't need to fly… that's what your imagination's for!" says the girl's father on finding his five-year-old daughter sprawled among the zinnias after leaping from the bathroom window, but she has acquired the taste for it, splashing and flying in the water at Worthing… The price she pays for her constant communion with the water, her ability to soar and fly beyond the dreams of ordinary mortals, is the competition circuit. Childhood and puberty are spent powering up and down pools, fighting pain, exhaustion and the water's changing moods. Echoing the aspirations of its heroine, Broady's stunning narrative seems to hover in its own distinctive element and, at times, to soar and fly. In prose of poetic precision and poignancy, he touches on the deepest dreams of the human heart."
CHRISTINA PATTERSON, 'Observer'

Broady's terse, lyrical tragedy is a devastating, highly focused study of talent and the slave trade in talent. The originality of its subject matter, its remarkable poetic cohesion, and Broady's lack of piousness, passionately argue broad social and moral criticisms which resonate well beyond the specifically English terrain explored… A beautifully unified first novel."
BILL BROUN, 'TLS'

"This slim but sensuously written first novel explores the psyche of a female athlete of extraordinary grace whose career is cruelly brief, overtaken by still more ruthlessly driven teenagers. Broady's book describes the life of a person so used by others she hardly knows how to experience her own self. Poignant and lyrical."
ESQUIRE

"The most interesting first novel this year – a dark and shiny account of the butterfly stroke, competitive sports and madness."
EMILY PERKINS, 'Guardian'

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006551971
• ISBN 13: 9780006551973
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144