Learning To Swim

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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. 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. 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.

I did see a couple of the mini twists coming but that took little away from a thoroughly enjoyable book. It takes a special person with a special talent to so vividly and expertly relay the story in a first person narrative by the main character from their pre teen years into their thirties . Self-conscious introvert Abigail grows up as an honourary member of her friend Frances' chaotic household, where she takes pleasure in the excitement and spontaneity missing from her own family life.I am so glad I did, I really enjoyed the story and the way events unfold from the perspective of Abigail, the main character. 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. Abigail thought she'd 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.

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It’s a tribute to the butterfly effect - what major consequences and echoes can be produced by a series of minor events in the past. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.

In the present day section too, there seemed to be more going on than was likely - a motor cycle accident, a fire. In dramatic contrast to her own conventional family, the Radleys were extraordinary, captivating creatures transplanted from a bohemian corner of North London to out suburbia, and the young Abigail found herself drawn into their magic circle. When Abigail's friend and fellow musician, Grace, notices the awkwardness of their brief reunion, and later asks Abigail about Rad, Abigail shrugs it off and tells Grace that the whole Radley family were friends of hers but she has now lost contact with them. She manages to do this by describing emotions and a sense of place efficiently without over-describing and for me, balances this perfectly with the amount of dialogue. Abigail Jex never expected to see any of the Radley household again, and thought that she'd 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.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Some of the experiences of working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor's Wife (Century, 2007). Abigail, when we meet her, is a cellist in an established orchestra and it is not until she attends an after show party and is introduced to Marcus Radley that we start to get a glimpse into the life of this young woman.

It’s a story about individuality, family secrets and contrasting upbringings, and I can’t recommend it enough. While we get to glimpse this family from the outside, we also see into the life of Abigail and her family. Just finishing up an inadvertent rereading of this after 20 or so years, and had no recollection of it at all until I reached a line on page 323 - “She wears so much face powder nowadays it’s a bit like kissing a bap” - and I remembered having to look up what a bap was and appreciating the tactile impact of that image. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. 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.