Author: Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466879041
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
From bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, writing as Madeleine Wickham, comes Swimming Pool Sunday "A fine entertainment."- The Times One shimmeringly hot Sunday in May, the Delaneys open their pool to the whole village for charity. Louise is there with her daughters, and while the children splash and shriek in the cool blue waters, she basks in the sunshine, attempting to ignore her estranged husband and dreaming of the new man in her life, a charismatic lawyer. The day seems perfect. Then a sudden and shocking accident changes everyone's lives forever. Recriminations start to fly. Whose fault was it? Louise's new lover insists that she sues the Delaneys. Her ex-husband isn't so sure. Opinion in the village is split. Old friendships start to crumble. New ones are formed. Will the repercussions from the accident ever end?
Swimming Pool Sunday
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466879041
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
From bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, writing as Madeleine Wickham, comes Swimming Pool Sunday "A fine entertainment."- The Times One shimmeringly hot Sunday in May, the Delaneys open their pool to the whole village for charity. Louise is there with her daughters, and while the children splash and shriek in the cool blue waters, she basks in the sunshine, attempting to ignore her estranged husband and dreaming of the new man in her life, a charismatic lawyer. The day seems perfect. Then a sudden and shocking accident changes everyone's lives forever. Recriminations start to fly. Whose fault was it? Louise's new lover insists that she sues the Delaneys. Her ex-husband isn't so sure. Opinion in the village is split. Old friendships start to crumble. New ones are formed. Will the repercussions from the accident ever end?
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466879041
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
From bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, writing as Madeleine Wickham, comes Swimming Pool Sunday "A fine entertainment."- The Times One shimmeringly hot Sunday in May, the Delaneys open their pool to the whole village for charity. Louise is there with her daughters, and while the children splash and shriek in the cool blue waters, she basks in the sunshine, attempting to ignore her estranged husband and dreaming of the new man in her life, a charismatic lawyer. The day seems perfect. Then a sudden and shocking accident changes everyone's lives forever. Recriminations start to fly. Whose fault was it? Louise's new lover insists that she sues the Delaneys. Her ex-husband isn't so sure. Opinion in the village is split. Old friendships start to crumble. New ones are formed. Will the repercussions from the accident ever end?
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
Author: Gil Courtemanche
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0345809130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202
Book Description
“Look, for people who’re going to be dead soon, we’re not doing too badly.” “The novel of the year” is what La Presse called this extraordinary book, a love story that takes place in the days leading up to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A first work of fiction by one of French Canada’s most admired journalists, Gil Courtemanche, it was first published in Quebec in 2000, spent more than a year on bestseller lists and won the Prix des Libraires, the booksellers’ award for outstanding book of the year. Rights were sold to publishers in over twenty countries in Europe and around the world. This humanist story of an unlikely love affair set against a holocaust has become an internationally acclaimed phenomenon, worthy of comparison with the work of Graham Greene and Albert Camus. The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel, Kigali, in the early 1990s, draws a regular crowd of assorted aid workers, strutting Rwandan officials, Belgian businessmen, French paratroops and Canadian expats. Among them is Bernard Valcourt, a documentary filmmaker from Quebec, on a mission to set up a television station in the capital. Valcourt, who for two decades has earned his living from wars and famines, lingers around the pool drinking warm beer and watching football; but most of all, watching Gentille, a beautiful young waitress, who is a Hutu but often mistaken for a Tutsi because of her family’s strange history. The trouble coming stems from a long conflict, instigated in colonial times by Whites who treated Tutsis as superior to Hutus. The Hutu government is now openly encouraging violence against Tutsis. The physical traits of the Tutsis make them easy prey, but they are not the only ones in danger. Too many people are already dying in Rwanda daily: of AIDS, of malaria, and increasingly at roadblocks at the hands of drunken militia, or pulled from their homes. The hotel staff and prostitutes sense trouble and death drawing closer as they continue providing drinks and meals and sex. The story of this developing catastrophe is revealed through the lives of a handful of Rwandans who befriend Valcourt. They confide in him because he listens, and because his interviews offer them a chance to try to change the way things are by telling the world. Their candour and warmth begin to make his heart glow. He meets people like Méthode, who knows a bloodbath is brewing and would rather die of AIDS in the comfort of a hotel room than by a machete. Threatened, frightened, sick, they don’t want to talk and act like they’re dying. Poor as they are, they want to have some moments of pleasure and celebrate life. As Kigali life continues in its resourcefulness and persistence, Valcourt is falling in love with Rwanda, and with Gentille, who loves him because he sees her as no-one has seen her before. Even as the worst horrors begin, as friends are raped and murdered, he starts to feel a strange peace in this land of a thousand hills, though he repudiates the outside world for its failure to intervene. Because Gentille is thought to be Tutsi, her life is in danger. Still, no-one can believe that the extremists will go too far, that brothers and sisters will kill brothers and sisters, and that 800,000 civilians will be massacred. A hard-hitting chronicle of an overlooked chapter of recent history, told with skill and compassion, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is also a celebration of living in the moment, of the integrity of friendship and the courage of everyday heroes. Harrowing, unsettling, challenging, but beautiful and moving, it is a book that cannot leave the reader untouched; as a Quill & Quire reviewer said, it is “full of real people that demand to be remembered.”
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0345809130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202
Book Description
“Look, for people who’re going to be dead soon, we’re not doing too badly.” “The novel of the year” is what La Presse called this extraordinary book, a love story that takes place in the days leading up to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A first work of fiction by one of French Canada’s most admired journalists, Gil Courtemanche, it was first published in Quebec in 2000, spent more than a year on bestseller lists and won the Prix des Libraires, the booksellers’ award for outstanding book of the year. Rights were sold to publishers in over twenty countries in Europe and around the world. This humanist story of an unlikely love affair set against a holocaust has become an internationally acclaimed phenomenon, worthy of comparison with the work of Graham Greene and Albert Camus. The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel, Kigali, in the early 1990s, draws a regular crowd of assorted aid workers, strutting Rwandan officials, Belgian businessmen, French paratroops and Canadian expats. Among them is Bernard Valcourt, a documentary filmmaker from Quebec, on a mission to set up a television station in the capital. Valcourt, who for two decades has earned his living from wars and famines, lingers around the pool drinking warm beer and watching football; but most of all, watching Gentille, a beautiful young waitress, who is a Hutu but often mistaken for a Tutsi because of her family’s strange history. The trouble coming stems from a long conflict, instigated in colonial times by Whites who treated Tutsis as superior to Hutus. The Hutu government is now openly encouraging violence against Tutsis. The physical traits of the Tutsis make them easy prey, but they are not the only ones in danger. Too many people are already dying in Rwanda daily: of AIDS, of malaria, and increasingly at roadblocks at the hands of drunken militia, or pulled from their homes. The hotel staff and prostitutes sense trouble and death drawing closer as they continue providing drinks and meals and sex. The story of this developing catastrophe is revealed through the lives of a handful of Rwandans who befriend Valcourt. They confide in him because he listens, and because his interviews offer them a chance to try to change the way things are by telling the world. Their candour and warmth begin to make his heart glow. He meets people like Méthode, who knows a bloodbath is brewing and would rather die of AIDS in the comfort of a hotel room than by a machete. Threatened, frightened, sick, they don’t want to talk and act like they’re dying. Poor as they are, they want to have some moments of pleasure and celebrate life. As Kigali life continues in its resourcefulness and persistence, Valcourt is falling in love with Rwanda, and with Gentille, who loves him because he sees her as no-one has seen her before. Even as the worst horrors begin, as friends are raped and murdered, he starts to feel a strange peace in this land of a thousand hills, though he repudiates the outside world for its failure to intervene. Because Gentille is thought to be Tutsi, her life is in danger. Still, no-one can believe that the extremists will go too far, that brothers and sisters will kill brothers and sisters, and that 800,000 civilians will be massacred. A hard-hitting chronicle of an overlooked chapter of recent history, told with skill and compassion, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is also a celebration of living in the moment, of the integrity of friendship and the courage of everyday heroes. Harrowing, unsettling, challenging, but beautiful and moving, it is a book that cannot leave the reader untouched; as a Quill & Quire reviewer said, it is “full of real people that demand to be remembered.”
The Swimming-Pool Library
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030780660X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
The dazzling first novel from the best-selling, Booker Prize-Winning author of The Line of Beauty and The Sparsholt Affair. An enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. The Swimming-Pool Library focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and Lord Nantwich, an elderly man searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030780660X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
The dazzling first novel from the best-selling, Booker Prize-Winning author of The Line of Beauty and The Sparsholt Affair. An enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. The Swimming-Pool Library focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and Lord Nantwich, an elderly man searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions.
Contested Waters
Author: Jeff Wiltse
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807888982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
From nineteenth-century public baths to today's private backyard havens, swimming pools have long been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect many of the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807888982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
From nineteenth-century public baths to today's private backyard havens, swimming pools have long been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect many of the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America.
Swimming Lessons
Author: Penelope Niven
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156027076
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
The author uses metaphors, such as floating, treading water, and swimming with all your might to share her insight on how to live life.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156027076
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
The author uses metaphors, such as floating, treading water, and swimming with all your might to share her insight on how to live life.
The Swimming Pool
Author: Louise Candlish
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1405919892
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
FROM THE AUTHOR OF ITV'S OUR HOUSE COMES ANOTHER GRIPPING, TWISTY PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT DOWN 'A novel that redefines the term "unputdownable"' HEAT ________ One summer can change everything . . . In the heady swelter of a suburban summer, the Elm Hill lido opens. For teacher Natalie Steele, the school holidays are always spent with her husband Ed and daughter Molly. But not this year. Despite Molly's extreme phobia of water, Natalie is drawn to the lido and its dazzling social scene, led by glamorous Lara Channing. Soon she's spending long days with Lara at the pool and intimate evenings at her home. Real life, and the person she used to be, begins to feel very far away. But is the new friendship everything it seems? Or has Natalie been swept dangerously out of her depth? ________ 'Exquisitely written and addictively dark. Sheer perfection' Clare Mackintosh, author of Let Me Lie 'A compulsive psychological thriller that will give you the shivers' Sunday Mirror 'Clever, claustrophobic' Fabulous 'Tautly plotted - a psychological drama with edge' Good Housekeeping
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1405919892
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Book Description
FROM THE AUTHOR OF ITV'S OUR HOUSE COMES ANOTHER GRIPPING, TWISTY PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT DOWN 'A novel that redefines the term "unputdownable"' HEAT ________ One summer can change everything . . . In the heady swelter of a suburban summer, the Elm Hill lido opens. For teacher Natalie Steele, the school holidays are always spent with her husband Ed and daughter Molly. But not this year. Despite Molly's extreme phobia of water, Natalie is drawn to the lido and its dazzling social scene, led by glamorous Lara Channing. Soon she's spending long days with Lara at the pool and intimate evenings at her home. Real life, and the person she used to be, begins to feel very far away. But is the new friendship everything it seems? Or has Natalie been swept dangerously out of her depth? ________ 'Exquisitely written and addictively dark. Sheer perfection' Clare Mackintosh, author of Let Me Lie 'A compulsive psychological thriller that will give you the shivers' Sunday Mirror 'Clever, claustrophobic' Fabulous 'Tautly plotted - a psychological drama with edge' Good Housekeeping
A Taste of Chlorine
Author: Bastien Vivès
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0224090968
Category : Back
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
A teenage boy suffering from curvature of the spine begins swimming every week at the local pool, at the repeated request of his chiropractor. In the interior and echoing world of the swimming pool, surrounded by anonymous bodies and in between lengths, he becomes acquainted with a girl who agrees to give him pointers on his technique.The French original won the Essentiel Revelation prize at the Festival d'Angouleme in January 2009. The author was 25 years old at the time."
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0224090968
Category : Back
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
A teenage boy suffering from curvature of the spine begins swimming every week at the local pool, at the repeated request of his chiropractor. In the interior and echoing world of the swimming pool, surrounded by anonymous bodies and in between lengths, he becomes acquainted with a girl who agrees to give him pointers on his technique.The French original won the Essentiel Revelation prize at the Festival d'Angouleme in January 2009. The author was 25 years old at the time."
Pool
Author: JiHyeon Lee
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452150389
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 57
Book Description
What happens when two shy children meet at a very crowded pool? Dive in to find out! Deceptively simple, this masterful book tells a story of quiet moments and surprising encounters, and reminds us that friendship and imagination have no bounds.
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452150389
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 57
Book Description
What happens when two shy children meet at a very crowded pool? Dive in to find out! Deceptively simple, this masterful book tells a story of quiet moments and surprising encounters, and reminds us that friendship and imagination have no bounds.
The Swimming Pool Season
Author: Rose Tremain
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446450511
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
From the author of The Gustav Sonata After the collapse of 'Aquazure', his swimming pool construction business, Larry and Miriam Kendall have exiled themselves to a sleepy French village. When Miriam is summoned to her mother's deathbed in Oxford, Larry begins to formulate a dazzling new idea: the creation of the most beautiful, the most artistic swimming pool of all. Around them, Rose Tremain weaves the intricate fabric of the lives of two communities: Miriam's mother, Leni, clever, beautiful and arrogant. Polish Nadia, tortured by the passions of her sad and guilty past. Gervaise the peasant woman - content with her boisterous German lover and confused husband. And the young tearaway Xavier, in love with the virginal Agnes. Over a million Rose Tremain books sold ‘A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion’ Independent I ‘There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain’ Irish Times ‘Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect’ The Times ‘Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists’ Salman Rushdie ‘Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness’ Marcel Theroux, Guardian
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446450511
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
From the author of The Gustav Sonata After the collapse of 'Aquazure', his swimming pool construction business, Larry and Miriam Kendall have exiled themselves to a sleepy French village. When Miriam is summoned to her mother's deathbed in Oxford, Larry begins to formulate a dazzling new idea: the creation of the most beautiful, the most artistic swimming pool of all. Around them, Rose Tremain weaves the intricate fabric of the lives of two communities: Miriam's mother, Leni, clever, beautiful and arrogant. Polish Nadia, tortured by the passions of her sad and guilty past. Gervaise the peasant woman - content with her boisterous German lover and confused husband. And the young tearaway Xavier, in love with the virginal Agnes. Over a million Rose Tremain books sold ‘A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion’ Independent I ‘There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain’ Irish Times ‘Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect’ The Times ‘Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists’ Salman Rushdie ‘Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness’ Marcel Theroux, Guardian
Swimming Home
Author: Deborah Levy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620401703
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize "Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain? A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620401703
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize "Readers will have to resist the temptation to hurry up in order to find out what happens . . . Our reward is the enjoyable, if unsettling, experience of being pitched into the deep waters of Levy's wry, accomplished novel." - Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, France, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe's enigmatic wife allow her to remain? A subversively brilliant study of love, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.