Personal interests often vary, and those with no knowledge or even care about those things which others see as unique and interesting, are a part of what makes each and every person individual. I do not profess to know much about swimming, nor do I understand the thoughts of those who live to swim, so I was quite surprised to find myself immersed in The Night Swimmer by Matt Bondurant.
The Night Swimmer tells the tale of a couple very in love, who find themselves in a place that they little imagined. Winning the ownership of a pub in a small town on the coast of Ireland, Fred and Elly Bulkington find themselves in a place full of resistance to strangers, and next to a powerful and wild North Atlantic sea. The land itself is shaped by the storms and wild waves surging into the land become a source of the belief and heartache of the natives of this wild and harsh terrain.
While Fred works at making the pub successful, Elly realizes her love of swimming and finds solace in the surging waters of Cape Clear Island. It is hear she first becomes involved in the age-old feuds and dangers of life in the remote islands of Ireland, where danger seems to lurk everywhere.
As her marriage begins to unravel, so too their idyllic lives begin to fall apart, with danger threatening from those who do not want them there. Can they get through the anger and build their life together as it is meant to be? Can they help to stop a feud riven before time and full of heartache, or will they too be lost to the dangers and harshness of the land?
Bondurant has given us a group of characters full of life and danger. The descriptions of the land pull you there and engrave the beauty as well as the danger in the storm-driven waves.
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