the girl who stopped swimming

Joshilyn Jackson
Grand Central Publishing (2008)
ISBN 9780446579650
Reviewed by Danielle Feliciano for Reader Views (1/08)

As a fan of Ms. Jackson’s previous two books, I felt honored to have a chance to read and review her upcoming book, “the girl who stopped swimming.”  This book far exceeded any expectations I may have had for this author.  Her character development is beyond brilliant.  She brings her characters to life and makes them relatable to any reader.  Personally, I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of southern life, nor of such abject poverty that is touched upon in this book.  However, Ms. Jackson was able to bring me right into the world her characters inhibit and I was able to truly understand where they came from and what contributed to who they became as adults.

Though all of the characters in this book were artfully written, I feel the main character isn’t a person; rather, the theme of escape and lies.  What lies do we tell ourselves in order to get through each day?  Further, are the lies we tell ourselves worse than those we tell others?
           
Overall, Laurel seemed to have a major dissociation from reality.  She used her dreams and sleepwalking to escape what she could not handle, yet when things became more vivid, she learned she could no longer run away from her past and from herself.  Her sister, Thalia, seemed to have made a life for herself by escaping.  She could have become a cliché by the author making her an actress yet that was addressed within the book.  Thalia was not acting out to escape what we all were led to believe; rather, she just preferred to live her life on her own terms and too often, reality got in the way of that.
           
The one character I had trouble with was David.  He was so far removed from life that he ignored everything, seemingly only to be happy in his cavern in the basement that he called an office.  I struggled to figure out what he may have been escaping, only to decide that he was the most connected with life, only on a different level than anyone else.  He may not remember his own birthday, but he was truly happy with his family and was more emotionally in-tune with himself than anyone else.

The author masterfully wove a delicate line between the dream world and reality, using dreams to explain aspects of reality that the character Laurel was not able to face.  She was able to do this so well that at times, I wasn’t quite sure what was a dream and what was really happening.  The dreams not only helped explain reality, it helped see into the past of Laurel and her family.  At times I wondered if Laurel’s dreams were a subtle sign of mental illness but in the end, I felt it was her conscience trying to break through to her.

The end of “the girl who stopped swimming” could be said to be too happy, too “wrapped up in a neat bow.” To anyone who says that, I strongly disagree.  I feel that Ms. Jackson’s ending cemented what she was saying all along.  Many of us try to escape our pasts.  We unconsciously let that build cracks in our lives.  When we fight so hard to escape who we are, we have no solid foundation on which to build a life.  The bravest of us are able to at one point face what we can never escape and start to fill in those cracks.

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