Customer Reviews

Swimming Sweet Arrow : A Novel

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book was one I'd not heard of, but chose based on Amazon recommendations. I am so glad I did. The minute you open this book it is impossible not to be immersed in the harrowing stories of the main character of the book -- Vangie. A product of a lower class divorced couple, Vangie was not dealt the easiest or best cards in life.

The language in this book is incredibly explicit and does not hold back; anyone who cannot handle that should think about reading it. That said, the language is not just thrown in wrecklessly. It is used necessarily to convey the thoughts and the actions of the characters.

We see Vangie and her best friend from when they graduate high school and cannot wait to move out on their own with their boyfriends to what they go through when they enter the lives they imagined. However, June, Vangie's friend, takes a path that worries Vangie. A path of danger, and one that cannot end well.

Vangie's growth is what makes this book most compelling, for she is a complex woman with intelligent and thought provoking ideas despite her humble upbringing or the unfortunate life she chose of drugs and alcohol -- and in time she questions all the choices and decisions she made. She looks at everything with a keen eye and learns to sort through right and wrong. She also is imressive in her ability to hold her own, to question the right issues and to take care of herself. She is someone whom in real life I might never encounter, so I am glad I have in this book. I was sad to see it end and will not soon forget Vangie.

I hope for much more from this author. Her talent is exraordinary.

Swimming Sweet Arrow is a wonderful novel. The author has done a fantastic job of writing what, at first, seems to be a novel about sex. But once the reader moves through the story, it becomes clear that this novel is about more than the blatant sexuality of the core characters -- there's a lively tenderness at work here. Swimming Sweet Arrow is a story about love and acceptance, real life and growing up, and some very powerful friendships.

The novel opens with friends Vangie and June making out with their boyfriends, Del and Ray, in the same car at the same time. One would think it would be awkward to see each other, as well as the other's boyfriend, naked all the time, but this whole invasion-of-privacy thing has only brought the two couples closer together. They share the same job at the chicken farm and the same dreams of living on their own after highschool. Swimming Sweet Arrow is a chronicle of their lives, together and separate, and the unmistakable bonds that hold them.

The language is crisp and honest, nothing is held back in this novel. Maureen Gibbon has crossed a line with her prose -- and it should definitely have an NC-17 rating attached -- but it is refreshing to read something so achingly real no matter how far into the danger zone it reaches. I loved it, and can't wait to see what comes next for this author.

What first attracted me to this book was the picture on the cover and the fact that is was a first novel for Maureen Gibbon. From the very first words I read I knew I was going to enjoy this book. The heroine, Vangie Raybuck tells a candid tale of her life starting in high school with her boyfriend Del and her very best friend June and her boyfriend Ray. All the emotional, excitable trials and tribulations of two young women growing up in a working class life style are translated through their multiple sexual encounters. The language is raw, honest, simple yet very meaningful.
Vangie's daring, caring, loving voice defines her love, her sexual behaviour, her frienships and her jobs with such passion and candor that I could not help loving her. Her story involving drugs, drinking, sex, violence and religion is so moving, it touched me in such an unexpected way that I will never forget this beautiful novel.
When Vangie states ; ''Here is what they never tell you about being a girl'', it made me think of my own youth and all we had to learn through experience. Even though the sexual details are very explicit, Maureen Gibbon's writing is sharp, expressive, bold even risqué, it is never cheap.
I loved this book and highly recommend it.

You need to know that reading "Swimming Sweet Arrow" will be both a harrowing and compelling experience. Laced with extremely explicit descriptions of sexual acts, Maureen Gibbon's debut novel traces the desperately joyless life of Vangie Raybuck and her close friend, June Keel. We watch, with horror and fascnation, as Angie's relationship with her lover Del flowers by the intensity of their mutual sexual passion and collapses by Del's drug addiction and Vangie's debilitating capacity to engage in lies and self-deception. Indeed, the novel brilliantly chronicles the theme of self-destruction, and its irony of portraying that immolation through the most intimate of human intercourse gives "Swimming" its power.

The sheer power and volume of sexual activity detailed in the novel should not be mistaken for the author's parallel emphasis on the halting, but very real discovery of personal integrity and authentic identity by Angie. Her growing awareness of the emptiness of her life is fueled by her self-reproach over a series of actions and lies which lay bare the non-existence of her relationship with Del and her increasingly complicated friendship with June. Personal betrayal, lies and deceit flow like subterranean rivers throughout this fast-paced novel.

Contemporary authors are giving increased scrutiny to the despair and frustrations of blue-collar Americans, and the interpretation Ms. Gibbon provides is not a comforting one. Trapped by tough jobs, limited by a sense of powerlessnes and bound by a lack of future, both Vangie and June allow their bodies to be the means of expressing discontent and yearning. Their inability to articulate the nature of their attraction to the men in their lives, their willingness to submit to (and to abet) sexual degradation, their anger and frustration with the results of this submission, the seeming non-existence of horizons...all these combine to add to the aura of bleakness in this novel. "Swimming" deserves the praise and attention it will undoubtedly receive.

I read this novel straigh through. The pacing is so strong that it pulls you in. I couldn't stop reading--mainly, because the narrator, Vangie, speaks so directly, honestly. At times her voice felt searing, unmodulated, something like reading a journal. In some other hands, the recklessness of Vangie, her working-class, small town situation, more typically would receive irony, condescension. Swimming Sweet Arrow demands you to approach Vangie's life on her terms. In a way, like Zola, but with optimism. This book is unlike anything I've ever read.

I LOVED this book! Gibbon did such a great job! I first purchased this book based ont he recommendations I recieved from amazon. I started to read it and about 10 pages into it I stopped and didnt open it up again until I finished a different book. Boy am I glad I did though. I read it on a 3 hour plane ride and it was perfect to keep me occupied. The writing is original and fresh. The idea was captivating and it Gibbons kept you on the edge of your seat wanting to know what happened next. I recommend this book for young adults not under 16.

I thought this book was amazing. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. It's one of the few honest books I've ever read about what it's like to grow up female, and it's one of the few honest books about sex. I could relate to Vangie and her friend June -- to their dilemmas, their feelings and their experiences. The book is shocking in places, but that's because there's so much truth in it. It makes me think of those photos by Walker Evans in LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN. Gibbon doesn't turn away from the un-beautiful, and the result is a book that is strong and haunting.

This book had me hooked from the second I read an excerpt. I finished it in one sitting. I loved how it was so candid and open, even about things that most authors shy away from. I had known ahead of time that this book could be considered "explicit" and it was, but not in a crude way. The protagonist, Vangie, is so easy to relate to, and the issues dealt with in the book aren't foreign concepts to most people. This book is very bold, and it has a gripping story. I know I'll read it again and again

Take a erotic novel and a young adult story and put them together and Swimming Sweet Arrow is what you would have. A great book that crosses the lines at point but does it in such a good way.

Vangie is 18 years old and thinks things are going great in her life. She has the love of her life Del and her best friend June and her love Ray. What could be better, she lives on her own, has a job and is getting close to finishing high school.

Shorly after graduating from high school her friendship with June fades away and she moves in with Del and June moves in with Ray and his brother Luke. Vangie takes a job at the local diner as waitress and is making good money and living with Del. As time goes on she starts to see that things in her life and world aren't what she wants and she trys to change things.

This book has a lot sexual parts to it, it isn't for the person who isn't use to a lot of sex in a book, but it really adds a lot to the story to see how Vangie for a while thinks that sex is all that is out there.

This was a wonderful book and I enjoyed it a lot. A quick read. I hope this author will write more books.

This novel has the most remarkable in-your-face honesty - Vangie is a strong, yet struggling, young woman. I was utterly hooked by her life, her friendships, her boyfriends, her jobs and, last, but by no means least, her sex. Swimming Sweet Arrow is a beautifully written book, everyone buy a copy, you'll be glad you did so.