Learning to Swim and Other Stories

Great writer, great book! Enjoy it, dear friends!

Graham Swift, Learning to Swim and Other Stories (Washington Square Press, 1982)Graham Swift is something of a one-trick pony, actually, but the one trick he does he does exceptinoally well. This is less obvious when you're reading the man's wonderful novels-- Waterland, for instance, which someone will hopefully soon canonize as one of the classics of twentieth-century literature-- but when you get digging into a story collection, you realize that Swift, or a close family member, was in the throes of the nasty ending of a relationship while he was writing these stories. His main characters, at least those of an age to be so,are almost alwast divorced men, and the tale of the leaving wife is either the main thread of the story or part of the circumstance leading up to the main part of the story. Swift just takes that tale and paints it with different hues.Any fan of Mondrian or his brethren will hasten to comment here that different hues are usually enough to make the same thing interesting anew. Indeed, and such is the case with Swift's stories. Recognizing the similarity between the characters doesn't make them any less interesting, and it certainly doesn't lessen the top-notch quality of Swift's writing, which hasyet to flag in any book of his I've read even for an instant. The man is truly gifted.It's likely the publication date will give some readers pause. Yes, it's a collection of short stories published during the nineteen eighties. And yes, that should set off justifiable alarm bells in the reader who's been turned off to eighties lit. But what characterizes the good eighties lit (Vanderhaeghe, Swift, McInerney on his good days) and separates it from the bad eighties lit (Ellis, McInerney on his bad days) is emotion. Rest assured that Swift has emotion in spades. While his stories cover much of the same territory as those of his contemporaries, Swift is not the detached observer who narrated most eighties fiction; he is down in the muck of emotion, and has no qualms about dragging the reader in with him.Another excellent book from Graham Swift. ****

A collection of short stories which make me wonder about the authenticity of life and living,marriage,relationship,kinship and many more. Graham Swift wrote with intense drama of people and events. His writing rational,shrewd and truthful,sometimes seem dark but also realistic. His stories touched on the meaning of faithful marriage, the importance of finding yourself,your identity and also painful truth of learning to be part of the society--practical versus idealism. For example, in the title story Swift make readers looked at a couple from their respective point of view. How the husband and wife both at some points of their marriage wanted out but stayed on and continued to pretend as happily married couple. How they used their young son's swimming lesson as their source to avenge against each other... There is also an old doctor vent his anger(of his young wife's affair) on a seriously ill patient. He refused to acknowledge the fact that his patient is very sick,just like he don't want to face with the consequences of his wife is carrying another man's baby... Learning to accept and to live with what you got. Each stories some how convert a message in a painful yet truthful way of looking at modern days. Maybe this is life and it goes on.