BOOKS: Joshilyn Jackson's Third - SWIMMING

"Supremely talented, truly original author..."

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
by Joshilyn Jackson
(Grand Central Publishing, 2008)

Hardcover; 308 pgs; $23.99 U.S.

Ghost story? Family psycho-drama? Murder Mystery?

Joshilyn Jackson's latest novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, is all that and more, yet another triumph for the supremely talented and truly original author of best-selling novels, Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia.

There are many surprises in Swimming, which opens with happily complacent suburban housewife Laurel, being woke up by a ghost, which happens to be the spirit of the dead girl floating in Laurel's backyard pool. The dead girl turns out to be the girl from next door, Laurel's 13-year-old daughter's best friend. Things like this are not supposed to happen in Laurel's perfectly idyllic, gated community in Pensacola, Florida.

The mystery deepens into uncharted territory as we get to know Laurel and begin to realize all is not exactly as it seems in her carefully-constructed, happily-ever-after paradise.

Very much against her computer-geek hubby's wishes, Laurel brings her estranged sister, Thalia, in for support, to help unravel the mystery and push back the ghosts arising from a dysfunctional childhood.

At heart, it is the duality of the two sisters and their tangled past that drives The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Both are artists: Laurel is an award-winning quilter and fabric artist, creating gorgeous, intricate layers of pockets concealing surprising treasures in her quilts. We realize she is desperately trying to keep her past, other ghosts and family secrets buried in her quilts.

Thalia is almost the complete opposite: an actress, living an unconventional life. Thalia lives out loud and leaves nothing hidden, the consummate Drama Queen. She owns a black-box theatre with her gay husband in Alabama. Laurel and Thalia are both highly critical of each other's lives and choices:

"Thalia looked at her, nonplussed, and then dropped her face into her hands. 'Some days I wonder how you don't drive hard into a wall, just to make your life stop,' she muttered into her palms.
"Laurel, who sometimes wondered the same thing about her sister, had to bite her bottom lip hard to keep from saying so." (page 146)

What I find most fascinating, in retrospect, is how the two sisters seem to reflect two sides of the author's personality, perhaps introspective of any "housewife" balancing her own identity and creativity with the needs of husband and children and the lofty ideal of happily-ever-after.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is certainly another triumph for a talented author with an ear for southern flavor and eccentricity. My only very vague sense of disappointment with Swimming is because I loved Between, Georgia so much, with its perfect blend of quirky characters and surprising plot melded with setting. Swimming is a very different book, with only one brief glimpse of the very unusual DeLop, Alabama, where the sisters' roots are, and where more of the story might have been. In Swimming, it seems as if the eccentricities and quirkiness of the characters are never fully let out to play, and in Joshilyn Jackson's books, it is always so much fun when they do.

SEE ALSO: Focus On The Author - Joshilyn Jackson