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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Keegan, N. 2009 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stayton Public Library | KEEGAN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A spectacular debut novel from a ferociously gifted new writer. World-class swimming isn't all breathing and technique: for Philomena--reluctantly known to the world as Pip--it is a necessity. Haunted by a litany of childhood tragedy--an agoraphobic mother, a lost father, a drug-addled sister, and a Catholic education dominated by nuns--Pip escapes into the racing lane, where her suffering and rage are transmuted into beauty, grace, and purity of will.Swimmingis the story of Pip's rise from the star of her small Midwestern swim team to her first state meets, her brutal professional training, and her eventual gold medals as an Olympic champion. It is a story about competition, obsession, the hunger for victory--and about a young girl struggling to stay afloat, and to find salvation in the only way she can; a girl who discovers, in the agony and loneliness of adolescence and the family tragedies that threaten to engulf her, the supreme force of her spirit and the spectacular glory of her own body. Graceful, raw, hilarious, breathtaking in its physical and emotional precision and depth,Swimmingis already an international sensation--foreign rights have been sold in twelve countries--and promises to be one of the season's most electrifying debuts.
Author Notes
Nicola Keegan divides her time between Ireland and France with her husband and three children.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Keegan takes on death, religion, relationships and coming-of-age in her gorgeously stylized and irreverent debut about a rising Olympic swimming star. Not even a year after Philomena "Pip" Ash is born in 1960s Middle America, her parents put their rambunctious infant in a pool and watch the remarkable sight of a nine-month-old gliding through the water. With some help from "Olympic Supercoach" Ernest K. Mankovitz, Pip becomes a mercenary swimming machine who wins an unprecedented collection of gold medals in three Olympic games. Though Pip's connection with water is preternaturally intense, she can't relate to people, a dilemma heightened by early encounters with death and her innate awareness of loathsome pain and insecurities. After going through a premature career climax and the subsequent plummet, Pip is forced to deal with emotions she's spent her life ignoring; her sarcastic (and f-bomb laden) musings provide many amusing turns, while Keegan's linguistic playfulness moves the story at a fast clip, even if it sometimes muddles what's going on-particularly toward the end. This is worth reading for the prose alone. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Energetic first novel shows a talented athlete moving toward the Olympics and away from a Kansas family crippled by emotional instability and grievous loss. We first glimpse protagonist-narrator Philomena, nicknamed Pip, as an infant gradually adjusting to her family and environment. She's precociously skilled at demanding attention: "I've been experimenting with howling like a wolf," she tells us at nine months old. Despite the hovering, intimidating presences of her depressed mom, borderline-flaky dad (a research scientist studying bat behavior) and contentious sisters, Pip is soon garlanded with as many great expectations as was her Dickensian namesake. She's a physically gifted, naturally competitive swimmer who breaks local and state records while competing for her school and church before nabbing gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and moving on to further triumphs. The novel settles into bristling rhythms that contrast Pip's conquests of the swimming world, college and even sex (which she has always dreaded) with successive personal crises and tragedies that shake her confidence, setting her at odds with demanding coaches, dictatorial nuns and frustrating boyfriends as she tests the tricky waters of growing up and making choices. Slightly reminiscent of Lisa Alther's Kinflicks (1976), though the sexual emphases here are more varied, the novel boasts as its best feature insouciant, perky prose offered in a rollicking, present-tense narrative voice. Too bad, therefore, that Keegan lets the story trail away after sending Pip to Paris for a period of self-scrutiny. Her conclusion offers nothing more revelatory than token acceptance of whatever the future holds for an athlete "retired" while still an unfinished woman. Flags a little at the finish line, but nonetheless well worth plunging into. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Philomena Ash took to the water from the time she was a tot. For the landlocked Kansan, the local pool provided refuge from the raw realities of childhood: a moody, agoraphobic mother; a well-meaning if ineffectual father; and three sassy siblings, one of whom was dying of cancer. It soon became clear that Philomena had a talent of Olympic proportions. For years, she trained countless hours, endured long days in Catholic school, and crammed carbohydrates. Her father was the only family member to take a serious interest; a recreational pilot, he bonded with his daughter on jaunts through the boundless skies. When he died in a crash, Philomena was devastated, but she swam on, eventually nabbing 11 Olympic golds. For Philomena, everything made sense between in the water and between the lanes; it was relationships on terra firma that were troubling men, friends, a family forever at odds. Though Keegan's debut novel occasionally descends into melodrama, readers who have participated in competitive sports will appreciate her portrait of a very human athlete.--Block, Allison Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Philomena, the accursedly named protagonist of this ravishing first novel, is a daughter of Kansas with a weakness for malted milk balls and bath products "so enriched in what is not natural that I can cover my entire body in a gluey foam that remains intact until I stuff it down the drain with my big toe." By 17, Philomena (aka Pip) will have made good on the promise of her infant ability to "karate-kick" a bottle of baby oil (an event related by 9-month-old Pip in an astringent first-person prelude) to become a gold-bedecked Olympic swimmer. The obstacles Keegan has set in the way of Pip's athletic triumph come by way of a tumultuous, estrogen-rich family that looks like a reality-show update of "Little Women": pothead sister, alcoholic sister, controlling-saint sister, brainy-but-sickly sister and parents who both check out of life in dramatically singular fashion. Keegan enlivens this already combative mix with two memorably in-your-face girlfriends and a gaggle of steel-plated nuns. She's less interested in anatomizing championship swimming than in surveying the emotional landscape of her singular participant, which she maps with gorgeous technique and a life-giving quotient of snark.
Library Journal Review
Her life fraught with loneliness, tragedy, and chaos, Mina Ash struggles to relate to the world as she rises from the status of swimmer in a small Midwestern town to Olympic champion. Keegan's emotional first novel puts your heart in your throat from the start and doesn't let it out until the very end. Young actress/narrator Aya Cash shows impressive range in voicing Mina and the people in her life, adding a distinct sensitivity to Keegan's occasionally choppy prose. A great listen for fans of Pat Conroy and Maxine Swann. [The Knopf hc was described as "a well-crafted exploration of grief," LJ 6/1/09.-Ed.]-Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.