Showing posts with label Swimming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swimming. Show all posts

Friday, 21 July 2023

Double Negative

Finished July 17
Double Negative by Susan Marshall

This teen novel has a lot going on, with some romance and betrayal, friendship issues, school extracurricular activities, and athletic commitments. 
The main character, Reece, has an injury that pauses her competitive swimming activity. She's been swimming at this level for years, and has hopes of a swimming scholarship to help with her university goals. She, along with other swim team members, and high level athletes, go to a school that prioritizes these activities and structures academics around training and competition commitments. Because she's injured, she gets moved to the public high school, where her older brother Jaime also attends. 
Jaime is working on his extracurriculars in hopes of getting a university scholarship as well, and is running for president of the student council. When his vice-presidential running partner is disqualified, he convinces Reece to take their spot. 
Reece is slowly adjusting to life at the high school, which involves more activities that she is used to, and begins to find she enjoys some of them, while still missing her previous environment. But her former friends seem to have quickly moved on without her, and although she does the physiotherapy and other work to bring her body back to prime condition, she feels set apart from them. 
As Reece faces new challenges, from mentoring a younger swimmer, to writing a constitution for the student council, she also finds herself attracted to Zain, one of her brother's strongest critics, and an athlete himself. 
Zain has had his own setbacks, and has some baggage from that that causes complications in how they relate to each other.
This book really immerses you in Reece's situation, so you can feel her frustrations (with her brother, her body, her father, Zain, and others) as well as her determination (to get well, to create a good constitution, to get justice for those she feels deserve it). Good characterization and real teenage decisions bring this book to life. 

Monday, 23 January 2023

We Came Here to Shine

Finished January 21
We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall

This novel takes place in the summer of 1939 during the World's Fair and follows two young women. Vivi is an actress who is signed on contract to WorldWide Films, a Hollywood studio. She is supposed to be starting her first starring role when she is told that instead she will be on loan to the producers of the Aquacade, a swimming entertainment show happening at the World's Fair in New York. She will be replacing their lead female who was recently injured. Vivi is originally from New York, but left after a rift with her family. She is disappointed, and even more surprised when she finds how little time she has to learn her routine. Dealing with a mixture of reactions from the rest of the cast, she tries her best to find her feet while also finding that the past will come back in a big way. 
Maxine (Max) Roth is a journalism student at NYU who has high hopes for her summer placement at the end of her junior year. She's received high marks on all her articles and hopes that she will get the position at the New York Times. Instead she gets a spot at Today at the Fair, a daily newspaper that is run from and covers the World's Fair. Not only that, but her classmate Charlie, also at Today at the Fair, will be the one writing all the articles as the man in charge doesn't believe women belong in journalism. Max will be writing the event list for each day instead. Max hopes to win a contest over the summer, but she needs an article to enter it. 
As Max fights for her right to write, and Vivi throws herself into practice, they've each been keeping their head down, focusing on their work. On an evening when both take a break to experience the fair, they run into each other and find themselves becoming fast friends despite their differences. 
There is a lot of research that went into this story to give a sense of the Fair and its going ons, and the author used a lot of this historical information to make the story come alive. The two young women are both ambitious in their own way, and both learn what truly drives them during this time. The author brings in issues of patriarchy, harassment, and social mores as well. 
An enjoyable read that also enlightened me about a historical event I knew little about. 

Sunday, 6 August 2017

The Last Wave

Finished July 12
The Last Wave by Gillian Best

This novel moves around in time from 1947 to the present. Martha is at the core of the story, which includes her husband John, her children Iain and Harriet, Harriet's partner Iris, and their daughter Myrtle, and Martha and John's neighbor Henry.
Martha became a swimmer at a young age after a new drowning incident in 1947. This incident brought out a reaction in her father and her taking swimming lessons helped calm his feelings around it. Martha found the sea to be a natural fit and she increased her distance and endurance simply for the love of the act itself. She had never thought of swimming competitively until an insistent reporter, looking for a story, put it in her head. But marriage was imminent for the young Martha at that point and she turned her back to the sea to take on the role of wife and mother. Ten years later, the call became too strong, and she broke out of the traditional role she had chosen to take on the challenge of swimming the English Channel. By the end of her life, she had swum across the channel ten times, and tackled health and aging issues. For Martha, the sea is an escape from her life, a calming influence, a place that she can stop thinking and just be.
This is a story of relationships, of intolerance, of anger and regret, of families and those who become family through the act they take on for us. A wonderful book

Sunday, 4 June 2017

Pool

Finished May 30
Pool by JiHyeon Lee

This wordless picture book captures the imagination of a young boy and girl as they swim in their local pool. When they first arrive at the pool it is empty, but it soon fills with people and their accessories: inner tubes, inflatable boats, oars, water guns, and more. The two dive under the people and see each other and together they find a magical world of fish, sea plants, and many interesting creatures.
It reminded me of a false memory from my youth, when I was watching my older cousins swimming in a pool and, despite my father's warnings, was sure I could do what they were doing and so let go of the edge. Despite sinking, and causing my father to jump in fully clothed to haul me out, I was never scared, as I saw myself falling gently down through the water, watching fish and other creatures pass by. Of course there were no fish, but this book brought that time back to me.
Beautifully drawn, this story is a delight of imagination.