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    Heim schwimmen
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    Heim schwimmen
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    Heim schwimmen
    Ebook169 pages2 hours

    Heim schwimmen

    By Deborah Levy

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Es ist heiß. Sehr heiß. Sie sind aus London gekommen, um in einem Haus bei Nizza Ferien zu machen: Das Ehepaar Jozef und Isabel Jacobs, er Schriftsteller, sie Kriegsberichterstatterin; die beiden teilen schon lange nichts mehr, außer der Zeit, die sie miteinander verbracht haben. Ihre vierzehnjährige Tochter Nina, die wenig von ihren Eltern hält, aber umso mehr in pubertäre Gefühlsschwankungen verstrickt ist. Schließlich ein befreundetes Ehepaar, dessen Laden gerade pleitegeht. Beste Voraussetzungen für geruhsame Ferien.

    Tatsächlich bricht schon bald das Unheil herein. Ein nackter Frauenkörper treibt im Schwimmbad. Aber diese junge Frau namens Kitty Finch ist nicht tot. Schwankend zwischen verletzlich und exaltiert, nistet sich die selbsternannte Botanikerin mit den grüngelackten Nägeln in der Villa ein und mischt die ohnehin komplizierte Lage auf. Und sie wünscht sich nichts mehr, als dass der Dichter sich mit ihr und ihrem Gedicht "Heim schwimmen" beschäftigt.

    Deborah Levy gelingt es, in 160 Seiten und sieben erzählten Tagen ein beunruhigendes und doch vertrautes Familienpanorama zu zeichnen - unbehauste Personen, unfähig zu einem gemeinsamen Zuhause. Ein wahrer Albtraum, wäre das Buch nicht voller witziger Episoden und komischer Figuren.
    LanguageDeutsch
    PublisherVerlag Klaus Wagenbach
    Release dateJan 31, 2013
    ISBN9783803141255
    Unavailable
    Heim schwimmen

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    Reviews for Heim schwimmen

    3.5/5

    282 ratings27 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I didn't really like this book. Found it rather depressing and a bit pretentious. Although I agree with most reviewer's content (printed on the cover pages) I don't agree with their kudos. Studies of dark, troubled individuals are not my thing, nor is a cast of thoroughly unlikable characters. By the way hasn't anyone noticed that in the contemporary world Poets are neither rich nor famous -- at least the living ones.
    • 5/5
      This book is rather wonderful - cryptic, elusive, allusive and dreamlike, and very difficult to encapsulate or describe in a meaningful review. My only previous exposure to Levy was reading her most recent book Hot Milk, and this book occupies similar territory, at least superficially. Both are full of symbolism and striking imagery, and share similar southern European settings, but ultimately depend more on what is not said than what is. Levy toys with her characters and appears to understand them better than they do themselves. I won't even attempt to describe the plot, which seems almost irrelevant.
    • 4/5
      this book is written so well, it's almost like poetry. two poets try to swim their way home by fighting their inner demons. loved it!!!
    • 5/5
      What a fantastic work of prose! I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and this finely crafted story has given me the proverbial 'kick in the pants' to realize reading can still be a pleasure not a chore.
      A short novel but one that packs a powerful punch, this story of a family's vacation in the south of France and their encounter with a less than stable young woman they find swimming nude in their rented villa's pool, is worthy of it's place on the shortlist of the Man Booker Prize.
    • 2/5
      Up to page 50, this was the dullest book I'd read recently. Page 50 to about page 115 picked up a little, but still no visible reason for fuss. Pages 115-155 (the end, finally) were variously thriller, suspense, and tripped-out nonsense. And this made the Man Booker Prize shortlist? My respect for that honour just went down a few notches.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the language in the book. It was a short book but Levy does a good job establishing the characters. Obviously, it was hard to get into the head of each character in the short time but the story was "okay". Mostly I was impressed with her prose but didn't find the story or the character compelling or memorable. Read this mainly because it was short listed for the Booker Prize and was on notable book list from 2012.
    • 3/5
      Beautifully written. Short. Hard to put down, even when you want to. A book that you will think about for a very long time.
    • 3/5
      A short sharp shock of a story - complicated characters having complicated and slightly obscure interactions. There's something dreamlike about the way things unfold, and the book has a pervasive atmosphere of uneasiness. I felt like I missed some of the symbolism and references, and there were a few too many characters to juggle in such a short novel, but the ending is powerful and memorable.
    • 3/5
      Swimming home by Deborah LevyThis story is about a family that travels to enjoy their vacation at a villa. Joe and his wife Isobelle and daughter Nina. They arrive to find a nude woman, Kitty Finch coming out of their pool and after talking to her they find there are no hotel rooms and Laura invites her to stay with them.Joe is a poet and he finds the hot women are chasing him to read their own poetry-to help get them discovered.Other tourists get the attention of the family. Surprised kind of at the ending, thought it'd be another.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
    • 1/5
      The characters were flat, undifferentiated. They were faceless to me, doing nothing, being nothing, but somehow permeating the book with their unspoken whining. Intensely irritating. They all melted together as an amorphous mass of indecipherable...nothingness. I am so done with this book.
    • 3/5
      A philandering famous poet, his war correspondent wife and their daughter are spending the summer with friends at a villa in the South of France when out of the blue a naked young woman steps out of their swimming pool. The poet's wife invites Kitty (as she's called) to stay in the spare room of the villa as she says there has been a mix up in bookings, knowingly lighting the touchpaper of their marital problems.Kitty has a deadly combination of mental illness and obsession with the poet's writing, and the summer will never be the same again after her arrival.This novel was a quick read, and although it was inevitably leading up to a big end event I felt like I didn't totally engage with the writing. The characters were all fairly unlikeable, and though I never felt like aborting the read, I felt immediately ambivalent about it when I'd finished.3 stars - forgettable.
    • 3/5
      This novel was on the short list for the Man Booker Prize, so I felt obligated to read it twice to make sure I was not missing deep undertones that I assume are present in "serious" literature. The word "ennui" was invented for the people in this novel. The wealthy, world-renowned poet, Jozef, and his journalist wife, Isabel, are "on holiday" in France with their daughter, Nina, and friends (Linda and Mitchell) who can't afford the trip. They swim, they eat, one of them shoots rabbits and tries to catch mice in the act of defiling their food. The poet writes poetry. Into this world of leisure and disconnect stumbles Kitty Finch, an unbalanced botanist prone to wandering around nude and undernourished. She ends up staying with them and their world collapses as her mind fuses with and destroys various members of the group. Her presence forces them to stop hiding from themselves and confront the damage they are doing to their relationships with the people they love. The consequences are disastrous. I do find novels that I enjoy even when I don't like the circumstances portrayed. However this work was not in that category. Perhaps it was too somber and desperate. Although well-written, the connections between the dream states and the realities seemed somewhat obvious. I also didn't understand the presence of Linda and Mitchell. They didn't serve a purpose as far as I could tell other than to take your mind off the main characters and let you rest once in a while. Altogether not a great novel for me but not bad either.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written story about love, passion, poetry, and ways that the seemingly normal surface routines of life can conceal secrets. The story itself is a relatively standard one about a British family's French vacation--and the disruption caused by a beautiful, young, disturbed woman who they find swimming naked in their pool and they unaccountably invite to stay in a spare room in their villa. It is told over the course of a week, with a chapter for each day.

      The story is presented through a kaleidoscopic perspective that shifts the point of vision from character to character, with almost nothing told in the pure omniscient authorial voice so that even the physical descriptions of characters change or become more or less vivid as the perspective shifts.

      It is a very short novella and can easily be read in one or two sittings. It is also very intense, the emotional lives of the characters and the denouement of the story.

      Ultimately, one perspective wins out: that of the daughter of the British couple and an epilogue told years later steps back and provides a perspective on the pivotal week that is the subject of the book itself.
    • 4/5
      Die französische Riviera, ein Swimmingpool, zwei verheiratete Paare inklusive einer Tochter und Kitty Finch. Letztere ist zu Beginn nackt und regungslos in jenem Schwimmbecken anzutreffen, das zum Bungalow gehört, den sich die beiden Familien für den Sommer gemietet haben. Wie sich bald herausstellt, hat Kitty einige Rechnungen offen: mit der älteren Dame von Nebenan, die das Treiben rund um den Pool aus nächster Nähe beobachten kann oder mit Joe Jacobs, einem erfolgreichen Dichter. Dessen Frau wiederum, Isabel, war es, die Kitty zum Bleiben einlud. Und so nehmen die Dinge ihren Lauf und der Leser ahnt ab der ersten Minute, dass das alles nicht gut ausgehen kann. Tut es auch nicht. Faszinierend übrigens, wie ein Gedicht, das der Leser nie zu Gesicht bekommt, eine derartige Wirkung auf den Handlungsverlauf bekommen kann.
    • 2/5
      The story revolves around a man in a trouble marriage who's offered a huge paycheck if he'll write a biography of his bigger than life father-in-law. That would mean looking into the life of Big Bill Mulholland, who is presently a powerful magnate in international communications, oh, and was a legend in the world of espionage. John Glass is regularly a journalist, but when a million dollars is offered up for this book, he accepts the deal. Then he finds the project nearly impossible to begin. He asks around about someone to do research—and then things begin to happen and threats come his way. This is more mystery than I normally go for, but the writing won me over and I much enjoyed the ride the novel gave me.
    • 5/5
      Deborah Levy weaves a multi-layered tale where nothing is quite as it seems. Kitty is a disturbed young woman who gate crashes a villa where two British families are on holiday. On the surface she appears passive yet she is the catalyst that makes everything unravel. Levy evokes the heat and sultry atmosphere of the South of France in spades. A gem.
    • 4/5
      this book is written so well, it's almost like poetry. two poets try to swim their way home by fighting their inner demons. loved it!!!
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately I found I could neither believe, nor take much interest, in any of the characters in this mercifully short novel.
    • 4/5
      a very interesting novel, the story of a vacation that went wrong. two families rent a house in France, when they get there they find a very strange naked woman in the swimming pool. The woman is invited to stay there and she ends up being the agent for change.
    • 4/5
      Books like this are one of the reasons that I like my RL book club. Despite it being short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2012, I would have been pretty unlikely to have chosen this book for myself if I hadn't been doing my book club read of the shortlist. And I am glad I picked it up: despite having some initial misgivings in the first few chapters I thought it was a rewarding read and it warranted its place on the shortlist.Joe and Isabel Jacobs are holidaying in the South of France with their 14 year old daughter Nina, and friends Mitchell and Laura. Returning to their villa they find a young woman swimming naked in their pool. She introduces herself as Kitty Finch, and she explains she has also booked the villa, but there has been a mix-up with the dates and she is waiting for the villa's caretaker to find her a local hotel room. When no hotel room is available for several days, Isabel Jacobs surprisingly asks her to stay at the spare room in the villa. Only later does Kitty Finch confess to Joe Jacobs, a well-known poet, that she has followed him to the South of France in order to persuade him to read her poem. And as the day go by, other aspects of Kitty's behaviour start to become more and more unstable as well.At the start of the book my initial feelings were that these were irritating and arrogant people with whom I did not want to spend time, in particular Mitchell, who is a gun-obsessed obnoxious boor. But as the book progressed, and more and more is revealed this starts to seem a simplistic point of view. The prologue leads the reader to expect an affair between Joe and Kitty, but ultimately Kitty's presence in the villa has effects that stretch out in a far more unexpected direction.
    • 2/5
      I'd read such great reviews of this book, and waited quite a while till it was available from the library, but I just couldn't see what was so great about it. Couldn't stand the characters, writing ordinary, no real plot. Finally gave up.
    • 4/5
      Very brief. Very tightly written. Very complex. Like all great books, you finish with much to think about it. But it's written in such an economical and subtle style, and it moves so deftly, that you can enjoy it almost ignoring how ominous and affecting it is. Until you can't ignore that at all.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written story about love, passion, poetry, and ways that the seemingly normal surface routines of life can conceal secrets. The story itself is a relatively standard one about a British family's French vacation--and the disruption caused by a beautiful, young, disturbed woman who they find swimming naked in their pool and they unaccountably invite to stay in a spare room in their villa. It is told over the course of a week, with a chapter for each day.The story is presented through a kaleidoscopic perspective that shifts the point of vision from character to character, with almost nothing told in the pure omniscient authorial voice so that even the physical descriptions of characters change or become more or less vivid as the perspective shifts.It is a very short novella and can easily be read in one or two sittings. It is also very intense, the emotional lives of the characters and the denouement of the story.Ultimately, one perspective wins out: that of the daughter of the British couple and an epilogue told years later steps back and provides a perspective on the pivotal week that is the subject of the book itself.
    • 3/5
      I looked at the Booker short list to see if there was anything that might appeal to me aside from the Hilary Mantel I'd already read and this was one of two more I thought I'd like. The story centres around a young woman, Kitty, who suffers from severe depression and who might also have a bit of one or two other conditions as well who arrives at a villa on the French Riviera where two couples along with the daughter of one are staying. One of the men is a poet for whome Kitty has developed an obsession, feeling they connect on an almost mystical level. She's a stranger yet his wife invites her to stay with them all in the villa. The poet and his wife have a crumbling marraige. The husband of the other couple seems loud and obnoxious. The daughter of the poet is quiet and observant and seems to understand what's going on more than all of the adults. I liked the book but I didn't love it. It had a cast of characters that are all different from each other and the requisite clashes and personality differences. It's more a slice of life than an actual "story" with a plot. Some things will change and some things will stay the same.
    • 4/5
      Not quite sure what to make of this little gem of a book. A holiday, characters that are on course for a terrific crash of some sort, the insidious nature of depression all meet in this tightly structured, brilliantly worded novel. Every word, every scene means something, nothing is wasted. Strange but rather brilliant at the same time. Didn't quite manage to like it, but did admire it and the ending was not at all was I thought it was going to be. The tension in the novel is palpable and at times downright unconformable. So, so glad my holidays are not at all like this one.
    • 5/5
      The backstory: Swimming Home is on the 2012 Booker Prize shortlist.The basics: This novella explores the life of Kitty, a beautiful, deeply troubled young botanist with a passion for poetry. Set in a summer cottage on the French Riviera in July 1994, Kitty enchants Joe, a famous poet, who is vacationing with his wife, teenage daughter, and a couple of friends.My thoughts: From the first line of this novel, "When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no loner knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation," I was enchanted by both Levy's prose and these haunted, curious characters. Levy's crisp, precise prose paints vivid pictures of both the characters and setting. This novella is slight only in pages, but it packs an incredible literary and emotional punch.This novella was a page turner. Levy wowed me with the tightness and beauty of her prose in every single sentence. Rarely do I want to re-read a novel, but the combination of language and story in this novel is a rare delicacy.The verdict: There's a startling intimacy to this novel and its characters. As a reader, I was unsettled as a voyeur witnessing the tragedies unfold in the lives of these tender, haunted characters, but I also loved every word, punctuation mark and sentence. Levy has written a masterpiece, and it's utterly deserving of this year's Booker Prize.
    • 5/5
      Swimming Home is set in a villa in the French Riviera, where poet Joe Jacobs is vacationing with his wife, Isabel, his daughter, Nina, and their friends, Mitchell and Laura. Everything seems perfectly idyllic until a strange girl named Kitty Finch is found swimming naked in the villa's pool. Kitty pretends to believe that the villa was hers for the week, and Isabel invites her to stay. In reality, Kitty has sought out Joe, who she worships, to look at one of her poems. This lie is just the first in a series of secrets and deceptions that drive Swimming Home forward.Levy makes some interesting choices here, in her writing. Characters frequently believe outlandish things - for example, Kitty is initially mistaken for a bear, dead in the pool, and when Nina goes missing, the adults assume she has been kidnapped, when really she is merely asleep. Kitty is frequently accused of being crazy, but the gullibility and tendency to expect the worst of all the characters makes the entire cast seem a bit off their rockers. Next-door neighbour Dr. Sheridan, caretaker Jurgen, and local Casanova Claude round out the novel with more insanity. Add to this a writing style that is dreamy and trance-like, and Swimming Home feels a bit like that warped picture you get when you open your eyes underwater and look up at the world.Swimming Home is an excellent book, and I am thankful the Booker judges brought it to my attention.