A Novel
by Matt Bondurant
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2012
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From the "remarkable storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle) and highly acclaimed author of The Wettest County in the World comes a suspenseful novel about a young American couple who win a pub on the southernmost tip of Ireland and become embroiled in local violence and intrigue.
Matt Bondurant's novel The Wettest County in the World was a New York Times Editor's Pick, one of the San Francisco Chronicle's 50 Best Books of the Year, and is being made into a major motion picture. Now, Bondurant has delivered The Night Swimmer, an atmospheric tale infused with Hitchcockian suspense.
When Fred and Elly Bulkington arrive in a small town on the southern coast of Ireland from Vermont, having won a pub in a contest, they encounter a wild, strange land and the native resistance to outsiders. As Fred immerses himself in the life of a pub-owner, Elly takes the ferry out to a nearby island where she - to the disbelief of the locals - is consumed by her ritual of open water ocean swimming, pushing herself to the limits. Elly becomes enmeshed in the island's troubles - the power struggles between an enigmatic goat herder and the family that has controlled the area for centuries - while Fred's sanity wavers and their marriage begins to unravel.
Filled with lush imagery of the Irish coast, crashing sea, rolling hills, and rich Irish lore, The Night Swimmer is a stunning novel that exposes the dark and unseen crevasses in the human heart.
"While the story's supernatural threads are not quite clear, they illustrate the eerie and unknown found in strange and wild places. This will appeal to fans of magical realism." - Library Journal
"The most important unplumbed depths are those of Elly's character. That said, Bondurant has written another nervy, robust and suspenseful novel." - Kirkus Reviews
"Bondurant... excels at depicting his wild setting... but is less sure in drawing his two main characters, who, passionately in love at the start, suddenly become quarrelsome. The couple's mental and emotional unraveling may be as incomprehensible to the reader as the murky doings of the locals." - Publishers Weekly
"The Night Swimmer is intriguing, seductive, treacherous, and frightening. His writing is so beautiful, poignant, and poetic, that the book is worth a second read." - Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to Antarctica and Grayson
"Before you plunge into The Night Swimmer, be forewarned: there will be ghosts (and goats), and Gaelic spells cast by black waves of invisible power. But mostly you will be dazzled by the sheer force of Matt Bondurant's storytelling. In prose as rugged as Ireland's coastline and just as enchanting, Bondurant has offered up a breathtaking story of what happens when dreams come true and hearts are unbridled." - Betsy Carter, author of Swim to Me and The Puzzle King
This information about The Night Swimmer 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.
Matt Bondurant's second novel The Wettest County in the World was a New York Times Editor's Pick, and one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best 50 Books of the Year. His first novel The Third Translation (Hyperion 2005) was an international bestseller, translated into 14 languages worldwide. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The New England Review, and Glimmer Train, among others. He currently teaches literature and writing in the Arts & Humanities graduate program at the University of Texas at Dallas. For more information, visit www.mattbondurant.com.
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