Learning to Swim

By Graham Swift

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS AND MOTHERING SUNDAY, reissued for the first time in Scribner

Graham Swift’s first collection of short stories confirms his power to bring an edge of the extraordinary, the dangerous or the subversive into otherwise familiar, safe, even comforting settings. On a holiday beach, a mismatched couple wage a sexually charged war for the devotion of their literally floundering son. A family doctor, oppressed by his own domestic insecurities, intimidates an apparent time-wasting patient. A zookeeper becomes the keeper of a bizarre fixation . . .

While vividly evoking a recognisable English geography, these startling stories have an eye for the foreign, for the experience of refugees or for less definable zones of bewilderment and strangeness. More than one has a touch of the ghostly. Highly located yet haunted and haunting, they penetrate a hidden world of human dislocation.

‘Graham Swift should be read by everyone with an interest in the art of the short story’ Paul Bailey, Evening Standard

‘A masterful collection of stories’ USA Today
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Jul 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781471187551

Graham Swift

Graham Swift was born in 1949 and is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, including the highly acclaimed England and Other Stories, and of Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry and reflections on his life in writing. His most recent novel, Mothering Sunday, became an international bestseller and won The Hawthornden Prize for best work of imaginative literature. With Waterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and with Last Orders the Booker Prize. Both novels were made into films. His work has appeared in over thirty languages.

Reviews for Learning to Swim

[rascalstar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written stories of human relationships. Disturbing stories in some sense and yet familiar. Readers who only like satisfying endings will not like these, however, readers who enjoy excellent writing, keen observations, and reality (well almost for the last story) may enjoy this unusual collection. The author's masterful writing floats readers along to thoughtful endings.

I'd recommend this literary collection to readers who enjoy same.