Book Reviews
Brother kills brother, and a younger sister makes their story her own in this lush but unsteady modern-day Cain and Abel tale by first-timer Hershon. On a beautiful summer weekend, Aaron Wheeler brings his college girlfriend, Suzanne, home to meet his family in New Hampshire. Golden boy Aaron is a few years older than his volatile, difficult brother, Jack; their little sister, Lila, is eight. The visit is pleasant if tense, as Suzanne finds herself drawn to Jack against her better judgment. Late one night after a party, Suzanne and Jack end up swimming alone together at the lake behind the house. As Jack makes it back to shore, naked, Aaron is waiting for him. Jack's death is made to look like an accident—it is said that he fell on the rocks—and Aaron disappears, dropping out of college. When Hershon picks up the narrative 10 years later, the story is resumed from Lila's point of view. Now living in New York City and teaching private English classes, she stumbles through her daily life, glimpsing Aaron or Jack in all the men she sees. A chance encounter with Suzanne focuses her determination to discover what really happened that night in New Hampshire and to find Aaron again. Hershon's carefully worked prose aspires to hothouse perfection, but overworked metaphors and forced turns of phrase undermine its effectiveness. At moments, the narrative invites readers to sink beneath its surface, but Hershon fails to sustain the dark, atmospheric morass she cultivates.
Publishers Weekly
Memory and desire—these two words sum up this immersive novel. Memory of a summer night, a lake, an accident. Desire of Aaron for Suzanne, of Suzanne for Jack. Lila's memories of her brothers and her desire to make sense of the past. Hershon wraps you in her spell, intimately creating fine details—the prickliness of wet skin drying in the dark, the sound of a pale green porcelain teacup breaking, the smell of a dingy hotel room. Like Jane Hamilton or Sue Miller, she has an eye for place, an ear for dialog, and true feeling for character. While the details serve to propel the plot forward, the dialog brings to life characters so real that they breathe behind you. Marred only by two coincidences used to advance the story, this is a work of real feeling, talent, and great beauty. Buy a copy and dive in. —Yvette Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA
Library Journal
Hershon's first novel is an engrossing tale of love, redemption, and second chances. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Unrealized or discarded possibility are both the subject and nature of this earnest debut, a story reminiscent of the family-centered fiction of Sue Miller and Jane Hamilton. It begins in 1966, when Jeb Wheeler meets Vivian Silver and impulsively brings her to his house in the New Hampshire woods. The action then fast-forwards to 1987: the Wheelers' eldest son Aaron, 21 years later, has brought his gorgeous girlfriend Suzanne Wolfe for a visit. His parents are barely glimpsed presences (as they remain in fact), but Hershon focuses close attention on Aaron's mercurial eight-year-old sister Lila and especially his brother Jack, a vaguely sinister, sardonic misfit to whom Suzanne finds herself helplessly attracted. A midnight swim following a chaotic party at a friend's house shatters the Wheelers' already precarious solidarity, ends Aaron's relationship with Lila, sends him into self-imposed exile—and leads to a long final sequence dominated by the heretofore peripheral figure of Lila. Another decade has passed: she's now a student and part-time tutor in New York City, and she directly engages the ghosts of the Wheelers' past upon reencountering (now married) Suzanne and laboriously extracting the truth about her family's losses and Aaron's whereabouts. In a scarcely credible series of scenes, Lila finds Aaron (who doesn't recognize her), acknowledges in herself the tortuous complex of motives and emotions experienced by the people whom she's been quick to blame, and achieves a muted reconciliation. Much of Swimming absorbs and satisfies, because Hershon writes lucid, stinging dialogue and movingly conveys the sense of hollowness and waste that overpowers the lives of the people. The characterizations are sketchy, however, making for both an intermittently static and overlong read. A flawed if interesting debut by a more than capable writer who'll surely give us better.
Kirkus Reviews