Customer Reviews

Swimming Naked: A Novel

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"Swimming Naked," the debut novel of Stacy Sims, is told through the eyes of Lucy Greene. The chapters alternate between Lucy's memories of events from her dysfunctional childhood and the present day, as Lucy attempts to comfort her dying mother, Fay. Lucy and her sister Anna have always been emotionally malnourished. They never felt close to their aloof, self-centered, and chain-smoking mother, and after their father has a serious accident, he is no longer there for them.

Lucy and Anna have gone through life avoiding meaningful relationships. Lucy is promiscuous and uses wisecracks to avoid connecting with anyone emotionally. Anna is a wealthy housewife and agoraphobic who drowns her sorrows with alcohol. Only when their mother is on her deathbed do the sisters make an effort to stop the vicious circle of alienation that has made a shambles of their lives.

Stacy Sims uses prose like a scalpel. She peels away the outer layers of the Greene family to reveal the loneliness underneath. Sims understands that, of all the bloody battlefields in the world, in some ways the home is the most brutal one of all. Close relatives have the ability to heal or destroy one another. Sometimes, family members do not even know the damage that they are causing until it is too late. For love-starved children, it is a challenge to accept the past and start fresh, to "swim naked" into the world and take the chance of loving and being loved, with all the risks that this entails. "Swimming Naked" is a touching and bittersweet novel that tells some painful truths about the rocky journey to adulthood.

Anyone who has ever woken before dawn to pile in the car for a family vacation will be immediately drawn into this story. Anyone with a mother will appreciate the subdued, often silent, battles of will in this family. The details of a trip to the lake, the sunburn and the anger at the parents who forgot to put sunblock on her, allow the reader an intimate access into the world of Lucy, the main character. Sims juxtaposes past incidents durings Lucy's childhood with the present, where she has unwittingly become her mother's keeper. Sim's gift, though, is not only showing the differences in us as we age but those things that remain in us, as buried as they may be. Even when Lucy should have been naive, she wasn't, and when we expect her to be reserved, she isn't. The question of a freak accident versus a long, slow death forces the reader to ask whether it is ever possible to prepare for some things and whether there is a right or wrong way to grieve.

Swimming Naked is a quiet triumph. Stacy Sims' writing is impeccable in it's ability to convey complex emotions simply. Her style is clever, and clear - which makes for a better read. Lucy's emotional journey is all the better to experience because of Sim's superlative writing. The story is compelling, as Lucy is imperfect, and real...but with a touch of fantasy, as a suprising twist increases the excitement and tone of the story. Bottom line, anyone with a mother will love this book.

At first blush the Greene family appears normal, or at least close to it. As the story opens we see them on their way to vacation in the summerhouse they rent every year. The girls, Anna and Lucy, have to go to the bathroom and can hardly wait to get into the house, the parents are smoking like chimneys, the house is musty and full of remembered odors. Lucy expects the vacation to go the way of all the others she remembers. It does not.

That first night Fay, Lucy's mother, invites her down to the beach and together, mother and daughter go swimming naked. This is a special moment for Lucy and she sees her mother in a new light. Older sister Anna knows something has happened, but Lucy keeps her silence as the vacation continues. Then as they are getting ready to go home, a violent storm rocks the night, but Fay insistes that Lucy's father load up the car, despite the weather. He is struck by lightning. Not only has the lightning left is mark tattooed on his back, but it has left him simple minded and one day he just goes away.

Jump to the present, Lucy is thirty-two, a hard as nails woman who takes men when she wants them, no love involved. She's got a great job in the art world. She's living life the way she wants. Then she gets a call from Bella, the woman who lives across the street from her mother down in Florida. Fay is dying of lung cancer. Lucy goes to her mother's bedside and finds out that Anna knew that Fay was ill and told no one, now it is too late to help her, the cancer is too far along. But before Lucy can berate her sister, she finds out that Anna is back in rehab. Then Fay tells Lucy that her father is still alive and in Florida. This shocks her as she'd believed he had been dead for years.

And all of the above is woven together with the spinning wheel of a classic wordsmith. Ms. Sims gradually strips away the outer skin supposedly normal folk show the world, revealing a dysfunctional group of people that barely qualify as a family. Then she takes Fay's illness and impending death, Anna's lack of care for anybody but herself, Lucy's pent up anger and uses it all to bind a pair of sisters together in a way you'll never forget.

At first blush the Greene family appears normal, or at least close to it. As the story opens we see them on their way to vacation in their summerhouse. The girls, Anna and Lucy, have to go to the bathroom and can hardly wait to get into the house, the parents are smoking like chimneys, the house is musty and full of remembered odors. Lucy expects the vacation to go the way of all the others she remembers. It does not.

That first night Fay, Lucy's mother, invites her down to the beach and together, mother and daughter go swimming naked. This is a special moment for Lucy and she sees her mother in a new light. Older sister Anna knows something has happened, but Lucy keeps her silence as the vacation continues. Then as they are getting ready to go home, a violent storm rocks the night, but Fay insistes that Lucy's father load up the car, despite the weather. He is struck by lightning. Not only has the lightning left is mark tattooed on his back, but it has left him simple minded and one day he just goes away.

Jump to the present, Lucy is thirty-two, a hard as nails woman who takes men when she wants them, no love involved. She's got a great job in the art world. She's living life the way she wants. Then she gets a call from Bella, the woman who lives across the street from her mother down in Florida. Fay is dying of lung cancer. Lucy goes to her mother's bedside and finds out that Anna knew that Fay was ill and told no one, now it is too late to help her, the cancer is too far along. But before Lucy can berate her sister, she finds out that Anna is back in rehab. Then Fay tells Lucy that her father is still alive and in Florida. This shocks her as she'd believed he had been dead for years.

And all of the above is woven together with the spinning wheel of a classic wordsmith. Ms. Sims gradually strips away the outer skin supposedly normal folk show the world, revealing a dysfunctional group of people that barely qualify as a family. Then she takes Fay's illness and impending death, Anna's lack of care for anybody but herself, Lucy's pent up anger and uses it all to bind a pair of sisters together in a way you'll never forget.

Stacy Sims has a way of expressing difficult situations with a light touch. But she really makes her mark. Her comments about "family therapy" where the therapist's goal is to bring out family secrets that leave family members floundering with what to do with the information was deftly described. I could feel the confusion and pain of the family and empathize with the emotions, but did not get lost in it. Just when I think she's going to write something light she touches on something basic and primal to our pain and emotions. Her relationship with her mother, her yearning for the perfect mothering experience, made me rethink how I related to my mother. Well done!!!