Swimming Lessons Hardcover – February 7, 2017

From the author of the award-winning and word-of-mouth sensation Our Endless Numbered Days comes an exhilarating literary mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final page. Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan. Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage.My Thoughts: The alternating narratives in  Swimming Lessons  truly captivated me. One narrator was Ingrid, wife and mother, who has written a plethora of letters to her husband Gil, whom she addresses as “you” in these missives. She is finally having a conversation with him, one which he cannot ignore or dismiss. She is venting about their troubled marriage and the ways in which her life was a disappointment. There are, however, some brighter moments in her letters…mostly about their lives before she had to give up her dreams. Her dreams of an education and her own writing career. The education which she was unable to complete because of the university’s rules regarding married/pregnant students.Ingrid’s letters were written in 1992, just before she seemingly drowned (or disappeared). She speaks mostly of their lives in the 1970s…but also touches on the later years.Third person narrators included Gil and Flora. We see Nan from Flora’s perspective, and I didn’t like her very much, probably because she tends to dismiss Flora’s thoughts and ideas, and treats her like a young child. Nan apparently took on the mother’s role after she was gone. Later on, we see a kinder version of her.Gil seemed like a very selfish man, but since his present day situation shows him troubled and ill, I did feel some sympathy for him.I loved the descriptions of the book lined rooms and hallways. Stacks of books, sometimes two or three deep, surrounded them all. The fact that Ingrid’s letters were placed in the books in a somewhat planned fashion added to the intrigue of the story.Would Gil find the letters? Would he finally understand what his wife had been trying to say all those years? Would there be answers to their questions? What stunning events happened to bring the story to a riveting conclusion? And who is the mysterious woman who keeps showing up in Hadleigh? A 5 star read.

I purchased “Swimming Lessons”, by Claire Fuller, after reading (and loving) “Bitter Orange” a few years ago, and am just now getting around to it (my “To Be Read” stack is daunting).Ingrid and Gil are the two main characters around whom the mysteries swirl. Neither are at all likable – if you need that in a novel (I don’t). Basically it’s a mash-up of two fairly familiar plots: the first being the “disappeared mother” plot. Did Ingrid leave her husband and two daughters to live a life without them, or did she accidentally drown, or did she commit suicide?The second plot is the “handsome older English (it’s always English, isn’t it?) Professor and writer, seduces his young student (half his age) plot.”I enjoyed “Swimming Lessons” and was never bored by it. But “Bitter Orange” is a much better book.

This story is sad. The people are sad. Children growing up with a mother who can't do mothering very well. The father is living a lie.Very lovely writing made me want to finish it.

This is a story about a troubled marriage and dysfunctional family in which almost character is very unlikeable. The structure of the novel is interesting and it was well-written, but it was tough to care about any of these people except for maybe the older daughter who really got the short end of the stick. The husband is a world-class womanizer and arrogant, self-centered, selfish jerk, while the poor wife was too young and naive to understand what she was getting into before being stuck in a horrible marriage with kids. The younger daughter is flighty, immature, self-centered and completely useless like her father. The circle of friends and acquaintances are not much better. If you enjoy reading about miserable, stupid people, this is for you. I did not enjoy this novel but gave it three stars for the quality of the writing itself.

This book wasn't what I thought it would be--it was less, and it was more. It's a story of love, family, betrayal, and how hope can hinder your life.The chapters I found most interesting were Ingrid's letters to Gil, which described their tragic history in great detail. The present day sections involving Nan and Flora, however, were quite dull.Flora is such a complex character. She obviously has synesthesia, the ability to smell in color. For instance, dirty hair was described as khaki smelling, dirty sheets were described as smelling like the gray underside of mushrooms, and her father's writing room was described as smelling like otter brown. Beyond that, she kept mentioning over and over again about the "raining fish" and oddly, was fairly blatantly ignored.Overall, while it's a beautifully written novel, I probably wouldn't choose to read this author's works again. Mostly, it just made me feel angry. Angry at Ingrid for allowing her dreams to be redesigned by a womanizer, and angry at Gil for being such a firs-class douche.The ending of the book is vague, and it seems to me, the author's way of letting you the reader interpret what happened.After all, "....all books are created by the reader."

Swimming Lessons is a not very interesting novel about a fractured family. I do not really understand why so many of the reviews here speak so highly of it. The story is about the reasonably haphazard marriage of Gil and Ingrid, assorted offspring and couple of friends. The letters Ingrid leaves for her husband before she walks out of their lives suggest that Gil was a bastard.... their younger daughter Flora behaves badly.....and not much else. Otherwisethe characters are strangely devoid of any feelings. I had no sense of any of them other than some sketchy directions from the author. The only question I really had was WHERE actually was the story set?The book "reads" well. I would say a fair to middling novel of middle england.

I’m not a writer, so I don’t know how to put it into words, but I’ll try. I feel like I was witness to actual events, the details so minute and real. The characters all people I know. The setting so beautifully described, I could smell the salty air. Thank you for another fantastic read, Claire Fuller!

What a great read. I was hooked on this story, Ingrid & Gil’s love story punctuated with all the hurt, guilt & sorrow of a couple who should never have tried & yet they did.

Didn't like the book!

We all enjoyed it at book club.

When Ingrid, a beautiful young student, falls in love with English lecturer, Gil Colman, a writer and twice her age, she is warned about his unreliability by Gil's best friend Jonathan. However, Ingrid is charmed by Gil's good looks, his talent, his passionate personality and his seeming devotion to her; before long the pair are married, have two daughters, Nan and Flora, and all live together in Gil's seaside home complete with writing studio. But all is not as idyllic as it may appear to outsiders: Gil has lost his job at the university, his professional writing career is at a standstill, money is short and then Ingrid discovers that her husband, despite professing to being deeply in love with her, has had more than one extra marital affair (no spoilers, the story moves backwards and forwards in time and we learn this early on in the novel). And then Ingrid disappears into the sea. Twelve years later Gil has an almost fatal accident after thinking he has seen Ingrid in the street and when Flora rushes to his aid, she learns more about her father than she bargained for...A beautifully written story with some lovely descriptions of situation and setting and one that kept me intrigued as to what had really happened to Ingrid. The story is presented to the reader in alternating chapters, one written in the present day and the other in the form of letters which Ingrid writes to her husband (and tells the reader of Ingrid and Gil's life together) and leaves them dotted around between the pages of the many books in their home - and it was this part of the story (the letters) that contributed towards making the book a less than entirely satisfying read for me. Did Gil (the self-centred and stereotypical larger-than-life writer) ever find and read these letters? And what of Flora? As a creative and sensitive child she had understandably been more affected by her mother's disappearance than her older and very sensible sister Nan, but there is something more going on with Flora - is she meant to be on the autistic spectrum? I wanted to know more about Flora and more about Nan and what had happened to them in the years after Ingrid disappeared. And then the end (which I obviously won't reveal and which was not entirely convincing) was rather disappointing. So, in summary, parts of this novel were definitely better than others and although I very much enjoyed Ms Fuller's descriptive writing and I was quite absorbed in the story, I didn't find this a wholly satisfying read.3.5 Stars.