Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2010
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A heartbreaking affair, an unsolved murder, an explosive romance: welcome to summer on the Cape in this powerful debut.
Seven summers ago, Marcella Atkinson fell in love with Cecil McClatchey, a married father of two. But on the same night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil's wife was found murdered—and their lives changed forever. The case was never solved, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect.
Now divorced and estranged from her only daughter, Marcella lives alone, mired in grief and guilt. Meanwhile, Cecil's grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape with his sister for the first time in years. One day he finds a woman's bathing suit buried in a closet—a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father's affair—and, on a hunch, confronts Marcella. When they fall into an affair of their own, their passion temporarily masks the pain of the past, but also leads to crises and revelations they never could have imagined.
In what is sure to be the debut of the season, The Swimming Pool delivers a sensuous narrative of such force and depth that you won't be able to put it down.
"It is a story of deep and searing love, between siblings and lovers, but most powerfully, between parents and their children." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. With a strong underlying theme of longing woven throughout, LeCraw's work skillfully takes these characters through varying emotional journeys. An insightful piece, not just for beach or airplane reading." - Library Journal
"The Swimming Pool is more than an auspicious debut. Holly LeCraw's first novel is gripping, passionate, and beautifully written from start to finish, a moving chronicle of two damaged families struggling to free themselves from a complex web of secrets and lies." - Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher
"Holly's LeCraw's The Swimming Pool is a complex, astonishingly well-crafted, and completely compelling debut." - Anita Shreve, bestselling author of Testimony
"The Swimming Pool would have knocked me over if Holly LeCraw already had a shelf full of prize-winning books to her credit. What an intelligent, beautifully plotted, intriguing and un-put-downable story about family secrets that interlock and haunt. I was totally captivated and lost in admiration for this masterful novel.” - Elinor Lipman, author of The Family Man, My Latest Grievance, The Inn at Lake Devine, and Then She Found Me
"The Swimming Pool is a riveting family story that will hold the reader enthralled from the very first page. With great suspense, Holly LeCraw skillfully orchestrates the collision course of a present-day love affair with the dark mysteries of a family's past. She is a wonderful writer." - Jill McCorkle, author of Carolina Moon and Going Away Shoes
This information about The Swimming Pool was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Holly LeCraw lives outside of Boston with her husband, who is a journalist, and three kids. Her short fiction and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications, including the Edge City Review and the Boston Book Review. Her short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Though a newcomer as a novelist, she grew up in the book industry. Visit her at hollylecraw.com
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