Talia is the new kid in school, a senior transfer. She does well academically but doesn't speak to anyone unless necessary. In the cafeteria, she sits alone. She always goes home immediately after school. On the school bus, the other students stare at her. Behind her back, girls call her emo. She is a child of secrets.
We learn that Talia's mother died a few years ago and her brother Jesse is wheel chair bound. Talia makes a few oblique comments indicating that something is wrong with her life, and once we find out, it is like a hard punch in the stomach.
Not by choice, Talia lives in the deeper recesses of Plato's Cave. Yet, unexpectedly, a tiny ray of light penetrates the dark recesses of her cave. It comes in the form of a series of yellow sticky notes, from a boy in her class named Lagan. Blessedly, for both Talia and the reader, a love story slowly unfolds.
Logan is an outlier. Outwardly, he is an ordinary high school boy, but he is a master at observing and listening. He is attracted to Talia partly because she is the new girl in class, but he also seems intrigued about why she is so non-communicative and socially isolated. Even with him initially, she self-consciously hides her face with her hair, to cover the mysterious, nasty bruises on her lips.
In the beginning, even as Talia resists Lagan's attempts at communication with her, Lagan finds creative ways of working around and through her resistance. As difficult as it is, and as long and as many times as it takes, he continues to connect with Talia on a human level. In trying to draw her out of her cave, he is incredibly patient and never pushes her beyond her limit. He is not patronizing in the slightest. He is not trying to save her but to get to know her.
Give the circumstances, one would expect Talia and Jesse to be a snake pit of psychological complexes, but Talia and Jesse each have a solid inner core. They are resourceful and resilient. Talia's character is sustained by faith, hope, and love, of which to some extent Lagan is a catalyst.
The prose of Swimming is sparse. The author, Rajdeep Paulus, uses wonderful imagery and word play but otherwise focuses on plot and character. Overall, her sentences have a sense of being surrounded by lots of fresh air, providing a welcome balance to the concentration camp doom and gloom of Talia's dilemma. The author makes copious, expert use of free indirect discourse which keeps the story moving seamlessly. The story is compelling. At one point I had to remind myself that Talia and Jesse were not real people but fiction.
I wish the author had characterized the gardener more. Talia knows little about her father's background, but I wish the author could have provided just a bit more about him.
There is a lesson to be learned here, about respect for others. To a teacher, another student, or anyone other than her brother, the sullen, silent Talia is an enigma. For many of course, she would be vulnerable to ridicule, derision, laughter, or worst of all, judgment. As I read Swimming, the expression, you don't know what the other person is carrying, kept surfacing in my consciousness, over and over again. We all need to take a lesson from Lagan, to withhold our judgment others and to seek first to understand before trying to help. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. I am looking forward to reading the sequel.
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