Learning To Swim

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It’s a story about friendship and inter-family relationships and although the pace is fairly slow at times the author draws you in with her descriptive style of writing.

Raised in a very conservative household, only child Abigail lives out a dull life with Mother and Father in suburbia filled with net curtains and clipped lawns. One thing I didn't love was the excessive dramatism and tragedy; I know what their goal was but I don't think it was necessary to go to such lengths.

The book is set in London and revolves around Abigail and her friendship with Frances who come from very different families. What a carefully constructed and powerfully balanced novel this is: at the end I was descending the same steps I had walked up at the start. The characters live through the consequences of every random and deliberate decision they have made.

I had the sense that Clare Chambers' characters had taken over the plot and then left her in the lurch as to what to do with them. She is in awe of Frances' brother, Marcus (known only as Rad), and finds herself subsumed into the daily lives of the Radley family. It's not all comedy though - Chambers very movingly depicts Abigail's progression to adulthood, and the eventual weakening of her friendship with Frances Radley.The focus really is on Abigail's shifting relationship to those around her, and though the plot was a little rushed towards the end it had a hopeful quality to it that I found quite endearing.

review: Quirky book, follows a formula I have seen before - shy quiet lonely person gets drawn into a colourful family, and eventually they are treated as a member of the family, before some tragedy results in their total ejection and rejection. The Radley's were extraordinary, captivating creatures transplanted from a bohemian corner of North London to outer suburbia, and the young Abigail found herself drawn into their magic circle- the eccentric Frances, her new best friend; Frances' mother, the liberated, headstrong Lexi; and of course the brilliant, beautiful Rad. A pointless tragedy and exile to Australia dealt with two of them, while the others managed happy endings. Abigail thought she had banished the ghost of her life with them and the catastrophe that ended it, but thirteen years later a chance encounter forces her to acknowledge that the spell is far from broken. A light read, well written, but a somewhat unoriginal story - teenager drawn into the life of her school friend's eccentric family, with added romance and some family secrets, playing out over a couple of decades.This is a wonderful exploration of family, of growing up and imagining other families are more cool/interesting/fun/less troubled than your own, only beneath the surface, everywhere are secrets and tragedy lurks. The smart wit and brilliant characters remind me a little of Kate Atkinson but comparisons are in some ways unfair because this author has her own unique voice and style and should be recognised in her own right, which now after the success of Small Pleasures I hope and think she is.