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Swimming Home
Swimming Home
Dec 27, 2025 11:37 AM

Author:Deborah Levy,Sophie Ward

Swimming Home

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, read by Sophie Ward.

A poet, his wife, her daughter and their friends arrive at the French Riviera. The prospect of a long hot summer stretches ahead of them. At their villa, they find a body in the swimming pool.

But this body is very much alive. It is Kitty Finch: self-proclaimed botanist with lurid green fingernails, avid poetry fan, walking naked out of the water and straight into the centre of their holiday.

Why is she there? What does she want from them? And why does the poet's wife invite this beautiful young woman to remain?

Reviews

A startling piece of speculative fiction… A curious read, written with the urgency and pain of wartime, and it fired me with a fresh interest in its author

—— Guardian

[An] emotionally sure-handed novel exploring harrowing terrain with deft sensitivity

—— Sunday Times

The "trick to time" is that it can expand or contract at will, and in creating a mature heroine with decades of history, De Waal has herself performed a feat of skilful comprehension

—— Guardian Review

It's slight but engaging. The style is simple yet artful

—— Evening Standard

An unforgettable tale of grief and life-long love

—— Woman's Own

Moving and enlightening

—— Independent

A beautifully written, exquisitely crafted story of love, grief and the quiet courage it takes to survive great loss

—— S Magazine

A story that's full of care; even in its saddest moments it is tender and kind. It feels like a book about all the best parts of being human, about family and friendship, and the way that loss only hurts the way it does because it's grounded in love.

—— S K Perry

Tender with a fierce undercurrent of tension and heartbreak

—— Jane Shemilt, bestselling author of 'Daughter'

A beautiful book

—— Andrew Marr

These distillations of everyday life have all the beauty of a finely crafted life drawing

—— Financial Times

The Trick to Time starts gently and ratchets up the emotional intensity until you're ugly crying into your pillow

—— Sunday Times

A warm and endearing book about learning to live again

—— Good Housekeeping

The Trick to Time proves that Kit de Waal is a writer destined for even greater things

—— Red

[The] ending will leave you reeling

—— Daily Mail

As tender and luminous as her debut.

—— The Mail on Sunday

Baume’s writing is lyrical and immensely readable ... [her] portrait of a conflicted young woman is heart-wrenchingly real on every page.

—— Yorkshire Post

A refreshing take on the genre, a semi-autobiographical retreat novel about finding something to live for not in nature but in art.

—— The Skinny

With this inventive and fascinating new novel Baume proves that she is the master of describing the intense poignancy of solitude within a noise-drenched world.

—— Lonesome Reader

Baume achieves the feat of making a book about depression, alienation and other cheerful subjects deeply absorbing and, ultimately uplifting. She does this through the elegant lucidity of her prose, the sharp truth of her insights and the wry humour that arise from her character’s associative mind.

—— Literary Review

A masterclass in the power of prose that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt lost.

—— i paper

Baume’s writing is distinguished by remarkable precision and lucidity

—— Daily Mail

A compelling story, finely written and forensic in its search for truth... This account of one family's tragedy is a haunting story that lingers long in the memory

—— Church Times

An example of masterful storytelling

—— RTE Culture

With each novel Ryan gets better, and this moving and quietly insistent work is his best yet.

—— RTE Guide

You can sense his compassion in the bones of his work

—— Sunday Business Post

Devastating and masterful

—— Irish Country Magazine

A hugely affecting, moving read. I was heartbroken by the end, but adored every chapter

—— Image Magazine

Beautiful

—— Woman’s Way

Each section displays Ryan’s range as a writer... [he] writes with brilliant empathy.

—— Boston Globe

Exquisitely rendered, with raw anguish sublimated into lyrical prose.

—— Washington Post

Heartbreaking … Arguably the best of the new wave of Irish writers to have emerged over the last decade

—— Irish Mail on the Sunday, Books of the Year

Ryan has the gift of ventriloquism - he inhabits his fictional creations thoroughly, enveloping you in their worlds

—— Sunday Business Post, Books of the Year

Sublime

—— Irish Independent, Books of the Year

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan made me laugh and cry and forced me to look strangers in the eye

—— Liz Nugent , Irish Times, Books of the Year

Beautifully bleak and characterised by his remarkable ability to write about grief and common humanities.

—— Diarmaid Ferriter , Irish Times, Books of the Year

Beautiful, compassionate

—— Sinéad Crowley , RTÉ Culture, Best Books of 2018

Superlatives wouldn’t do for describing From a Low and Quiet Sea … understated, and gloriously heart rendering

—— Hot Press, Books of the Year

Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life

—— Maggie O'Farrell

Anything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout

—— Roddy Doyle
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