REVIEW: ‘Swimming’ is gold medal of a book

By Mary Sharp

The Gazette

Nicola Keegan has written an extraordinary novel that easily jumps into the deep end of the reading pool.

“Swimming” (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95, 305 pages) tells the story of a young woman who finds her solace and salvation in a swimming pool.

Pip is big - 6 foot 2, eventually - gangly and slow to mature. Ill at ease around just about everyone, she finds her medium in water. She swims and swims, hiding from her less-than-perfect life and family. It leads to friendships and Olympic gold medals - lots of both.

And while that's the story, the novel's soul is Pip's love of her sprawling, brawling family and the devastating losses that almost destroy that family.

You get to eavesdrop on the casual cruelty of sisters living under the same roof. You cringe (and laugh) at the mortifying locker room teasing. You remember what it's like being one of those awkward teenagers fumbling your way to adulthood.

This book really is a “Catcher in the Rye” for girls, one that drips with originality, ending with a Faulknerian descent into the deep end of the pool and a redemptive grab for life.

One example of the novel's buoyant humor comes when Pip is standing on the podium accepting one of her gold medals:

“The noise of the crowd explodes in my mind, the world rolling into a sea of face. The national anthem starts to wail, creating a dreaded musical pressure in my chest as the flag slowly rises in a celebrating-the-dead kind of way. Something churns and my mind says: Wow! This is exactly like a giant funeral!”

Careful readers will find a few references to Keegan's hometown - the “Beaver” Park zoo. But this is no memoir. This is a muscular gift of literature, one from an incredibly gifted writer, who just happened to grow up in Cedar Rapids.