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THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING has one of the best opening lines I've ever read: "Until the drowned girl came to Laurel's bedroom, ghosts had never walked in Victorianna." Laurel herself, however, has been haunted all her life, and this book is less about finding out how Molly died in her backyard pool and more about Laurel confronting all the ghosts she thought she'd left behind. Laurel has been haunted all her life. Haunted by the need to hide her low-class roots. Haunted by her out-of-control sister's reputation. Haunted by her mother's willful blindness (her children call it "Cowslipping," after the deliberately oblivious rabbit in WATERSHIP DOWN). Haunted by her uncle, who appears by her bedside nightly, the moon shining through the bullet hole. She thought she had moved beyond those things when she dropped out of college to marry the man who got her pregnant and moved into Victorianna, an upscale planned community. For a while, everything was perfect. The perfect marriage, the perfect daughter, the perfect career as a professional quilt artist, even the perfect project in the way she was helping the least objectionable and most grateful child from the drug, crime, and poverty-ridden neighborhood in which her mother had grown up. The only real problem was her contentious relationship with her sister Thalia, who was convinced that Laurel's husband was stifling her and kept doing her best to break up the marriage. But then one of her daughter's friends visited as a ghost, slipping through the window to show Laurel the body that was still in their pool. Then nothing was perfect for Laurel anymore. Her daughter and the rescued cousin were sullen and withdrawn, hiding what they knew about why Molly was in the back yard in the middle of the night. Thalia, to whom Laurel turned to help, continued to spend most of her energy attempting to blame David for everything. And David was hiding in his basement, obliviously working on a new software game. Although there is a dead body, THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING isn't a mystery novel. It is somewhere between chick lit and suspense (the publishers just say "fiction") where the mystery of what happened to Molly is solved, but it takes a back seat to Laurel figuring out where she really stands in her relationships and facing down her ghosts – real and metaphorical, past and present - once and for all. It is a slow but rich read, the chapters going over old ground but each time bringing a new revelation or perspective. This is not a book to be breezed over lightly on a rainy day, or to match wits with a fictional detective. It is a book to be read when you are feeling thoughtful and introspective, and when you are, you will turn the last page with a sense of satisfaction.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, February 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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