From Publishers Weekly
This female-bonding story of intensifying trust has a marketable, real-life parallel likely to attract prepublication attention: co-authors Villegas (All We Know of Heaven) and Hugo collaborated by telephone, fax and diskette without ever having met. The result (narrated in distinctive, alternating voices) is surprisingly seamless. When Laurel McArthur was six, she watched, mute with horror, as Ohio River floodwaters swept her brother away. Three decades later, a psychotherapist in Auburn, Ohio, she remains phobic about water and decides to arrange private lessons from swimming teacher Marna Whitney. A transplanted, trailer-park Californian (and disappointed Olympic hopeful), Marna has secret self-doubts of her own. She clings with poignant desperation to her husband, J.W., and takes refuge from her insecurities by doing laps, much the way Laurel does by helping her patients. As their friendship deepens, each woman becomes open not only to the other but also to her own potential worth. What's immediately apparent to the reader is that Marna's husband is Laurel's lover, Jake. Surprisingly, this giant coincidence fails to sink the narrative; its biggest weakness is the need to bring closure to peripheral relationships (between Marna and her mother, Laurel and the family of a patient). Despite this excessive neatness, the main storyAof two people learning to exist in, then enjoy, what each had thought of as an alien elementAis bittersweet and rewarding. Doubleday/Literary Guild featured alternate; author tours.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
To use one of the many trite water metaphors that pervade this workAit sinks. The paint-by-number plot is quickly summarized. Laurel, a psychotherapist, is afraid of water because of a childhood incident. But when her boyfriend suggests a vacation in the Bahamas, she opts for swimming lessons rather than telling him the truth. Laurel's instructor, Marna, is afraid to have children, owing to the circumstances of her own childhood. Looming between them is a secretAbut if the narrative development is intended to surprise readers as well, the authors have failed, for the outcome is predictable by Chapter 2. The only mystery is how these two purportedly close women remain unenlightened for so long. Throughout, the language is sloppy and the underlying psychology overly simple. Expect media attention for the two authors and corresponding demand, but don't expect quality literature.AYvette Weller Olson, City Univ. Lib., Seattle
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A schematic tale about the friendship between two women that, weighted by much pop psychoanalyzing, just barely keeps afloat. The small-town Ohio story coauthored by poet Hugo and novelist Villegas (All We Know of Heaven, 1997) opens as psychoanalyst Laurel's lover Jake asks her to come to the Bahamas with him. Ever since she witnessed her brother Tims drowning in a freak flood, Laurel, who was six at the time, has felt she could have saved him if only she'd been able to scream. As a result, shes terrified of water and can't swim. But she loves Jake--so over to the local Y she goes, there meeting Marna, a former champion swimmer and current Y instructor. Marna, married to J.W., was raised in a trailer park by Roxie, a tough, chain-smoking single parent; Marna never knew her own father. A sadistic boyfriend of her mother's once threw Marna in deep water, and he still haunts her dreams. Marnas relationship with Roxie isnt close at all, and she doesn't think she can bear the children J.W. wants (secretly shes been taking the Pill). And so, these two women have plenty of confidences to share as Laurel confronts her fears and slowly learns to swim. Laurel tells Marna all about Jake and Tim, and Marna confesses her reluctance to confront her fears or J. W., who has been behaving rather strangely. When the two discover how much they have in common, their friendship actually almost ends. But when Laurel breaks up with Jake and Marna divorces the cheating J.W. the two women take the plunge and plan a trip to the Bahamas, where Laurel can show off her swimming skills and Marna her new self-esteem. More at home in the shallow than the deep end, though nicely detailed. (Literary Guild Featured Alternative) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Lynne Hugo has published two volumes of poetry. She and her family live in Ohio. Anna Tuttle Villegas, author of the novel All We Know of Heaven, lives with her daughter in Lodi, California.
