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The Night Swimmers
“Swimming at night, to compare its slipperiness to that of a dream would be to ignore the work of staying afloat, the mesmerism brought on by the rhythm, the repetition of the strokes.”
Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. Peter Rock’s stunning auto-biographical novel begins in the 90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, where the narrator, a man recently graduated from college, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells, the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears.
Twenty years later, the narrator—now married with two daughters—tries to understand that time, its obsessions and dreams. Digging into old notebooks and letters, as well as clippings he’s preserved on the “psychic photography” of Ted Serios and scribbled quotations from Rilke and Chekhov, the narrator rebuilds a world he’s lost—those searching and uncertain drives, his vague wish to be a writer. He also searches for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel, and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.
A novel of highly charged and transformative thought and soaring physicality, The Night Swimmers explores the depths of an identity in motion with lyrical insight and reflective imagination few works of fiction can summon. It lays bare what it means to come to terms with your fraught and weighted choices as you struggle to make peace with the person you’ve found yourself to be. Consonant with other Sebaldian re-inventors of autobiographical fiction, this novel is an exploration of unrelenting meaning.
Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places. Peter Rock’s stunning auto-biographical novel begins in the 90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, where the narrator, a man recently graduated from college, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells, the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears.
Twenty years later, the narrator—now married with two daughters—tries to understand that time, its obsessions and dreams. Digging into old notebooks and letters, as well as clippings he’s preserved on the “psychic photography” of Ted Serios and scribbled quotations from Rilke and Chekhov, the narrator rebuilds a world he’s lost—those searching and uncertain drives, his vague wish to be a writer. He also searches for clues to the fate of Mrs. Abel, and begins once again to swim distances in dark water.
A novel of highly charged and transformative thought and soaring physicality, The Night Swimmers explores the depths of an identity in motion with lyrical insight and reflective imagination few works of fiction can summon. It lays bare what it means to come to terms with your fraught and weighted choices as you struggle to make peace with the person you’ve found yourself to be. Consonant with other Sebaldian re-inventors of autobiographical fiction, this novel is an exploration of unrelenting meaning.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 12, 2019
59 people are currently reading
1001 people want to read
About the author
Peter Rock
25 books338 followersPeter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent novel, Passersthrough, involves a murder house, a fax machine, communications between the living and the dead, and a mountain lake that moves from place to place. He is also the author of the novels The Night Swimmers, SPELLS, Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, as well as a story collection, The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared and been anthologized widely, and his books published in various countries and languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Alex Award, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a Professor in the English Department of Reed College. Leave No Trace, the film adaptation of My Abandonment, directed by Debra Granik, premiered at Sundance and Cannes and was released to critical acclaim in 2018. His eleventh work of fiction, Passersthrough, will be published in early 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
April 16, 2019
I loved writing this book! I hope it shows. For now I'll give it five stars, though that might change with time.
December 3, 2019
From the Tournament of Books longlist - this semi-autobiographical novel about a young man and an older woman who swim together on the lake at night. While the writing is fine, the story, to the extent there is one, is meandering and pointless.
December 6, 2019
I went looking for books from the Tournament of Books 2020 longlist in Hoopla and landed on The Night Swimmers is audio. There really isn't much here, a story of a teenaged boy intrigued with a woman living nearby and they both swim at night. But nothing really happens. These chapters alternate with even less interesting chapters from the narrator in his present day that just sound like they're probably the author in his real life.
December 28, 2018
There’s nothing like diving into a novel with depth. And Peter Rock certainly shows us the depths of Lake Michigan and his love of night swimming in open water, as he looks back, age 50, to the summer of 1994, when he was 26 and a recent college grad. I share Rock’s love of swimming, so I just about twinned with him as he described, through beautiful imagery, the mystical power of open water swimming, specifically at night. “On the horizon I could see the lights of distant boats…We found our rhythm again, the slight chill of the water receding with the effort. The blackness below, the darkness above, the way they blended together and time stretched. I could not keep count of my strokes.”
The timelessness of swimming underscores the author’s (and autobiographical novel’s) attempt to reconcile his memories, (both from the past, the present, and perceiving the past from the present), to his sense of self and his choice to be a writer. Using art, poetry, fairytales, photos, and scraps of old letters and emails, Rock revisits his values, passions, and commitment-phobia earlier self and seeks to discover a personal wholeness in the world he inhabits. The narrative seemed to be reaching to make peace with the past, his 1994 attraction to an older widow, and the unsaid words and misunderstandings toward past girlfriends.
I am an excellent swimmer who shares Rock’s love of night swimming. However, other than the delicate, sensual swim and water imagery, this novel felt more like trying to find the depths in shallow water. He constructed it mostly as different meditative thought pieces, with a scant story within to hold the narrative together. But there was always a sense of the author, not as narrator only, but as the man behind the curtain trying to be the wizard. He included interesting tidbits of information (which occasionally felt like a Wikipedia stroll), but this wholeness he desired to achieve in life didn’t work for me as a novel. In fact, it fell flat, and seemed more like swimming in circles.
The thin story was dragged out—a widow he met and had as a swimming buddy that 1994 summer didn’t strike me as all that enigmatic. Rock’s attempt to milk that mystery not only got old, but the longer it went on, the more it appeared contrived, as if he were searching for a reason to keep on plumbing the shallow depths. He also shared several black & white photos of his children at various times, but it came across as self-conscious, like social media posts, spuriously included. They weren’t essential nor did they add to the story of his self-searching, so it struck me as gratuitous.
Aspects of the book were engaging, due to his stirring, tactile prose and passages. I sensed that he was trying to project an unreliable narrator keen to be reliable, but the story was thwarted by choppy seams and scant momentum for his raison d’être. I haven’t read any of Rock’s work before for comparison, but there’s evidently talent here. There were some glittering pearls in these narrative waters, but the sum of its parts didn’t feel whole to me.
The timelessness of swimming underscores the author’s (and autobiographical novel’s) attempt to reconcile his memories, (both from the past, the present, and perceiving the past from the present), to his sense of self and his choice to be a writer. Using art, poetry, fairytales, photos, and scraps of old letters and emails, Rock revisits his values, passions, and commitment-phobia earlier self and seeks to discover a personal wholeness in the world he inhabits. The narrative seemed to be reaching to make peace with the past, his 1994 attraction to an older widow, and the unsaid words and misunderstandings toward past girlfriends.
I am an excellent swimmer who shares Rock’s love of night swimming. However, other than the delicate, sensual swim and water imagery, this novel felt more like trying to find the depths in shallow water. He constructed it mostly as different meditative thought pieces, with a scant story within to hold the narrative together. But there was always a sense of the author, not as narrator only, but as the man behind the curtain trying to be the wizard. He included interesting tidbits of information (which occasionally felt like a Wikipedia stroll), but this wholeness he desired to achieve in life didn’t work for me as a novel. In fact, it fell flat, and seemed more like swimming in circles.
The thin story was dragged out—a widow he met and had as a swimming buddy that 1994 summer didn’t strike me as all that enigmatic. Rock’s attempt to milk that mystery not only got old, but the longer it went on, the more it appeared contrived, as if he were searching for a reason to keep on plumbing the shallow depths. He also shared several black & white photos of his children at various times, but it came across as self-conscious, like social media posts, spuriously included. They weren’t essential nor did they add to the story of his self-searching, so it struck me as gratuitous.
Aspects of the book were engaging, due to his stirring, tactile prose and passages. I sensed that he was trying to project an unreliable narrator keen to be reliable, but the story was thwarted by choppy seams and scant momentum for his raison d’être. I haven’t read any of Rock’s work before for comparison, but there’s evidently talent here. There were some glittering pearls in these narrative waters, but the sum of its parts didn’t feel whole to me.
April 8, 2019
Lovely, tender, introspective, intertextual, and surprisingly suspenseful. I had the sense, before I began reading, that this was going to be a prototypical coming-of-age story, focused on a relationship between a younger man and an older woman. But it's not at all, and I am so pleased that it wasn't. Beginning in the 1990s, the author-narrator is a recent college graduate, a lost and confused would-be writer, spending the summer at his family's summer home on Lake Michigan, with plans to stay on into the fall, until the cold drives him away. He also likes swimming at night. And that love of night swimming brings Claire Abel into his purview. Mrs. Abel is newly widowed, and two decades older than the narrator, her dead husband's cabin within walking distance, and she, too, likes swimming at night. And they swim together. She is a mystery to him, and remains so. Twenty years later, the narrator, now an author, married, with daughters, seeks to understand that summer when he was 26 or so, the connections made back then, how they have carried through, from the people he knew then, a wood carver who dies that summer, and years later, his work is in museum collections, his lake cabin worthy of saving for perpetuity, a painter whose work and writings filter through the narrator's life, as he digs through old boxes, old notebooks, letters to a former girlfriend, their emails in present-day, with aspects of all those elements set out for the reader. How do we find who we were, who we are, and how do those two states connect? It took me about 45 pages to fall into it, and just when I thought, hmmm, I'm not sure, something clicked for me, and I couldn't stop reading. The connection between the author-narrator and Mrs. Abel is mysterious from the start, and remains that way, to the very end, which leaves the mystery intact and wholly satisfying.
December 28, 2018
Much of who we are and what influences us lies right below the surface— “shadowy figures, shards of other times, glimpses into thickets of trees, rooms of houses I’ve never been inside.” For our unnamed narrator, who is certainly Peter Rock, an influence has always been Mrs. Abel, a mysterious 40-something widow who swims nightly in the currents of Lake Michigan. But one night, she mysteriously and temporarily disappears while exploring a strange shoal. In Night Swimmers, the narrator – two decades older, now a writer with two daughters – tries to get beneath the surface about what occurred that night and beneath the surface of who Mrs. Abel really was.
Sometimes we, as readers, are influenced by the book we read directly before the one we are reading now. In my case, that book was The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Both books were kind of autobiographical with the creation of a sort of fictionalized self. Both introduce reflections from writers and philosophers (here, Rilke and Chekov and Charles Burchfield), interior musings, and a “conversation with many texts, artefacts, images and songs.” Yet in The Friend, Sigrid Nunez opens herself up, taking the emotional risks that merge the reader to her unnamed narrator; here, Peter Rock chooses distancing techniques, with his prose on a loftier and more meditative plane.
Whether his creative risk-taking works or not is subjective. Some readers will find this book to be lyrical and haunting; others may believe it is murky and too slippery. There was, for me, a self-conscious quality to The Night Swimmers, as if Peter Rock were trying a little too hard to integrate his themes and connect to “The exhilaration of being in on something truly mysterious and beyond me.” My problem was that journey did not propel me into exhilaration nor did I feel as if I really understood the currents that were driving Peter Rock’s life. Much of the writing is lovely, but I never felt truly engaged.
Sometimes we, as readers, are influenced by the book we read directly before the one we are reading now. In my case, that book was The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Both books were kind of autobiographical with the creation of a sort of fictionalized self. Both introduce reflections from writers and philosophers (here, Rilke and Chekov and Charles Burchfield), interior musings, and a “conversation with many texts, artefacts, images and songs.” Yet in The Friend, Sigrid Nunez opens herself up, taking the emotional risks that merge the reader to her unnamed narrator; here, Peter Rock chooses distancing techniques, with his prose on a loftier and more meditative plane.
Whether his creative risk-taking works or not is subjective. Some readers will find this book to be lyrical and haunting; others may believe it is murky and too slippery. There was, for me, a self-conscious quality to The Night Swimmers, as if Peter Rock were trying a little too hard to integrate his themes and connect to “The exhilaration of being in on something truly mysterious and beyond me.” My problem was that journey did not propel me into exhilaration nor did I feel as if I really understood the currents that were driving Peter Rock’s life. Much of the writing is lovely, but I never felt truly engaged.
dnf
December 17, 2024Pulling the plug at 46%. Unless I missed something nothing much has happened except for some swimming. I know that is the title, but I thought there’d me more to the story by now. Sure, it’s written fine, just not grabbing me.
March 24, 2019
I like weird.
I like swimming.
I like stories about other writers.
And I like a good mystery.
So when I picked up Peter Rock's new novel, a semi-autobiographical foray into all of the above, I signed on with enthusiasm.
"Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden
drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places..."
Oh delicious mystery. Who isn't curious about what lies beneath?
It is the 1990's and the twenty-something narrator has just broken up with his Canadian girlfriend, with whom he had been living in Montana. He is, presumably, the author--a younger Peter Rock.
Returning home to his parents' second home on the Door to Peninsula of Wisconsin (Green Bay & Lake Michigan) Peter is looking for a soft place to fall so he can try to get his fledgling writing career off the ground.
In his mid-twenties, he finds he is no longer part of the younger bar-crowd, but he hasn't crossed over to the married-with-children crowd either. He's existing in the purgatory of unproven potential.
And so, he spends a lot of time in a small cabin on his parents' property. It's a small, quiet haven for writing.
At night, he goes out into Lake Michigan and swims for miles and miles. On just such a night, the narrator is startled to realize he is not swimming alone.
New widow, the middle-aged but attractive Mrs. Abel, also swims at night, always wearing a bathing cap and nothing else.
The two become companions of sort, and she encourages him to skip his Speedo, too, although she always seems to leave him wanting more--always with unasked questions forming in his mouth (always wanting other things as well, we presume.)
When Mrs. Abel disappears during one of their night swims, and later emerges with an incredible story about an underwater experience, Peter is hooked.
The older woman with the long graying braids becomes the young man's obsession, although it is clear to the reader that the young man isn't quite sure what their relationship is all about at all. Mrs. Abel is no cougar--she's too subtle for seduction.
The book shifts ahead twenty years to recent times when the narrator, who is now the married father of two precocious little girls, reflects on those mysterious months with Mrs. Abel.
Using old journals, stories he reads his children, letters he once exchanged with an ex, poignant quotations only a writer could love, something called "psychic photography" and dips in an isolation tank, the narrator returns to his past to find out what happened to Mrs. Abel.
Moreover, he wants to make sense of the odd relationship he had with his partner in night swimming. To do so, he returns to the old cabin and resumes his night swimming to try to piece it all together.
All in all, I wanted to like this book, but by about the halfway mark, I started losing hope of it picking up or even turning around.
I kept looking for the promised suspense, and just found a narrator who would have benefited from therapy.
This is a big nothing-sandwich, but it is presented on a lovely platter. If you read for lyrical prose and literary hobnobbery, have at it. If this is what literary is all about, I'll happily remain a provincial plebeian.
As someone keeps journals and quotes herself, I enjoyed parts of this book, but it was just a bit too self-conscious and neurotic for this foxy writer chick.
2 Stars = meh...
I like swimming.
I like stories about other writers.
And I like a good mystery.
So when I picked up Peter Rock's new novel, a semi-autobiographical foray into all of the above, I signed on with enthusiasm.
"Beneath the surface of Lake Michigan there are vast systems: crosscutting currents, sudden
drop-offs, depths of absolute darkness, shipwrecked bodies, hidden places..."
Oh delicious mystery. Who isn't curious about what lies beneath?
It is the 1990's and the twenty-something narrator has just broken up with his Canadian girlfriend, with whom he had been living in Montana. He is, presumably, the author--a younger Peter Rock.
Returning home to his parents' second home on the Door to Peninsula of Wisconsin (Green Bay & Lake Michigan) Peter is looking for a soft place to fall so he can try to get his fledgling writing career off the ground.
In his mid-twenties, he finds he is no longer part of the younger bar-crowd, but he hasn't crossed over to the married-with-children crowd either. He's existing in the purgatory of unproven potential.
And so, he spends a lot of time in a small cabin on his parents' property. It's a small, quiet haven for writing.
At night, he goes out into Lake Michigan and swims for miles and miles. On just such a night, the narrator is startled to realize he is not swimming alone.
New widow, the middle-aged but attractive Mrs. Abel, also swims at night, always wearing a bathing cap and nothing else.
The two become companions of sort, and she encourages him to skip his Speedo, too, although she always seems to leave him wanting more--always with unasked questions forming in his mouth (always wanting other things as well, we presume.)
When Mrs. Abel disappears during one of their night swims, and later emerges with an incredible story about an underwater experience, Peter is hooked.
The older woman with the long graying braids becomes the young man's obsession, although it is clear to the reader that the young man isn't quite sure what their relationship is all about at all. Mrs. Abel is no cougar--she's too subtle for seduction.
The book shifts ahead twenty years to recent times when the narrator, who is now the married father of two precocious little girls, reflects on those mysterious months with Mrs. Abel.
Using old journals, stories he reads his children, letters he once exchanged with an ex, poignant quotations only a writer could love, something called "psychic photography" and dips in an isolation tank, the narrator returns to his past to find out what happened to Mrs. Abel.
Moreover, he wants to make sense of the odd relationship he had with his partner in night swimming. To do so, he returns to the old cabin and resumes his night swimming to try to piece it all together.
All in all, I wanted to like this book, but by about the halfway mark, I started losing hope of it picking up or even turning around.
I kept looking for the promised suspense, and just found a narrator who would have benefited from therapy.
This is a big nothing-sandwich, but it is presented on a lovely platter. If you read for lyrical prose and literary hobnobbery, have at it. If this is what literary is all about, I'll happily remain a provincial plebeian.
As someone keeps journals and quotes herself, I enjoyed parts of this book, but it was just a bit too self-conscious and neurotic for this foxy writer chick.
2 Stars = meh...
March 7, 2020
What am I missing?! The book was recommended on some list (which I've forgotten). I've also forgotten the why it was recommended. How could a book go awry with my favorites: water, the night, swimming? And yet, it was a challenge to read. Please help me to understand.
February 6, 2020
A very evocative and unfussily beautiful bit of autofiction. A bit self-indulgent at times but overall a very lovely book.
October 9, 2020
Murakami flavored, a little messy, but still cute.
September 16, 2019
"If you already have a metal knife," my older daughter asked, "why would you make knives out of wood?"
"I don't know," I said. "It doesn't really make sense. That was just what I liked to do."
In my favorite Peter Rock novels, motivations are often mysterious. Mundane objects and actions, despite the quiet, earnest prose, usually point to confusion and uncanny, frustrating outcomes. I've read a number of Rock's earlier novels and his excellent short story collection; this feels quite familiar, but the autobiographical threads obviously suggest context for a somewhat different reading.
The ending is interesting and characteristic: it felt like we were being primed for the dreaded big event, but no.
(A tough one to rate; 3.5 stars rounded up.)
December 28, 2019
A man in his mid-twenties moves in with his parents one summer at their summer cabin on Lake Michigan. He wants to be a writer, but he's aimless and not sure what to do. He does enjoy long swims, especially late at night and in this pursuit he finds a companion, a recently widowed woman in her fifties. They swim for hours at night, together, but silent and alone. He becomes fixated on her, breaking into her house, stealing keepsakes and, in one instance, vandalizing her cabin. Over the years, his fascination with her continues, even as she doesn't reply to his letters. Years later, when he is married with children, he meets her again briefly.
This is a novel that I read grimly, turning pages and hoping for a moment of substance to weigh the thing down. No such luck. This is navel-gazing at its finest. If you enjoy semi-autobiographical novels about a well-off white man with a lack of direction and a poor understanding of boundaries, then this is the book for you.
April 24, 2019
Two stars only for the parts that involved Mrs. Abel. The night swims with her were the most interesting parts of the book for me. The rest was just page after page of self-absorption: how the author felt when his past relationships didn't work out, what happened to the letters he wrote to his old girlfriends, what he thought about while he was floating in a sensory deprivation tank, what books he was reading at different times in his life. Oy! I found it hilarious that he didn't really seem concerned about why his past relationships failed (like in High Fidelity kind of way), but he was more concerned about his own feelings during each relationship. At one point the author's father tells him, "In your life, one of the greatest pleasures, one of the most important uses of time is to daydream." Really, Dad???
December 1, 2021
An Oregonian, so I give leeway. One part memoirish of his nearly-Mrs Robinson summer as a 26yo, one part homage to being older and thinking back through how you got here romantically, and one part maybe surrealist night time in a Wisconsin lake. Quick read.
April 13, 2019
Oh my! At first I underlined every word, phrase, thought that reminded me if Rock’s earlier books. After a while, I was so enraptured with the story, I forgot to underline. This is truly a story of love and mystique, but it’s not a love story. I’ve always said “My Abandonment” is my favorite. This is competition. Beautiful...
May 21, 2019
There is great writing for this novel about a young man's long night swims with a mysterious, increasingly ethereal widow who is young enough to create sexual tension during their swims but old enough to separate herself from him. This is not a Mrs. Robinson.
The book's first paragraph sets the tone:
"To swim with another person-out in the open water at night, across a distance without stopping-is like taking a walk without the pressure, the weight of having to carry a conversation. to bring what is inside to the outside. Think of being with someone in a silent room, the tension in the air; water is thicker and you can't talk, can't stop moving. Instead, you're together, struggling along, only glimpsing each other's silhouetted arm or head for a moment, when you turn your face to breathe, a reassurance that you are not completely alone"
That summer the narrator was recently graduated from college living in his family's summer cabin in Wisconsin while Mrs. Abel was living in her husband's summer cabin. Her mystery deepens when she suddenly disappears. While the narrator moves on with his writing and his life, he marries, has children and moves to Oregon, he continues to try to find her, to understand her. Finally, 20 years after his night swims with Mrs. Abel, he returns to the family cabin.
I loved the writing about swimming, loved the mystery of Mrs. Abel, loved the narrator's evolving life. However, the continued tangents took away from the book. It was if they were creative writing exercises randomly inserted into the story, a feeling re-enforced by the author being a creative writing professor.
But for me, the writing about swimming and the allure of Mrs. Abel made the book worth the tangents
The book's first paragraph sets the tone:
"To swim with another person-out in the open water at night, across a distance without stopping-is like taking a walk without the pressure, the weight of having to carry a conversation. to bring what is inside to the outside. Think of being with someone in a silent room, the tension in the air; water is thicker and you can't talk, can't stop moving. Instead, you're together, struggling along, only glimpsing each other's silhouetted arm or head for a moment, when you turn your face to breathe, a reassurance that you are not completely alone"
That summer the narrator was recently graduated from college living in his family's summer cabin in Wisconsin while Mrs. Abel was living in her husband's summer cabin. Her mystery deepens when she suddenly disappears. While the narrator moves on with his writing and his life, he marries, has children and moves to Oregon, he continues to try to find her, to understand her. Finally, 20 years after his night swims with Mrs. Abel, he returns to the family cabin.
I loved the writing about swimming, loved the mystery of Mrs. Abel, loved the narrator's evolving life. However, the continued tangents took away from the book. It was if they were creative writing exercises randomly inserted into the story, a feeling re-enforced by the author being a creative writing professor.
But for me, the writing about swimming and the allure of Mrs. Abel made the book worth the tangents
December 11, 2019
I loved the feel of the night swimming scenes and wish there had been more of them.
May 14, 2022
«Nadé ida y vuelta frente al muelle de la señora Abel. Cincuenta brazadas, doblar, cincuenta brazadas de vuelta. Esperaba interceptarla, y mientras nadaba sentía lo mismo que ese verano de 1994: expectativa y confusión, un caótico presagio, la excitación de estar inmerso en algo verdaderamente misterioso y más grande que yo. En esa agua negra parecía que no habían pasado esos veintidós años, o era como si su paso no hubiera hecho efecto».
Peter Rock me sorprendió antes. Primero, con «Mi abandono»; después, con «Klickitat». Es magnífica su manera de amalgamar el misterio con la nostalgia y enredar la trama en visiones de la Naturaleza que, muchas veces, rozan lo onírico. En «Los nadadores nocturnos», nuevamente, lo hace. Aunque esta vez son retazos de su propia historia los que se cuentan; trozos de recuerdos, experiencias, material intertextual de artistas –escritores, pintores, fotógrafos–. Y el modo de narrar pasajes que se conectan para construir un paisaje mayor, una mirada melancólica del mundo.
El encuentro con la señora Abel durante un verano hace 20 años: una vecina de la que pocos saben y que él se dedicará a conocer, siempre de forma velada, con cierta distancia de por medio mientras practican natación por las noches. El recupero e intercambio de viejas cartas con una exnovia. Los libros que le lee a sus hijas, y las preguntas que, en consonancia, ellas le hacen. La mirada cambiante sobre sus padres, erosionada por el paso del tiempo; y la mirada cambiante sobre uno mismo: lo que uno fue, lo que pretendió ser, lo que nunca logró, o lo que sí. El calor del verano, el frío del invierno, los muelles, el lago, las olas, el ruido que el viento produce al hacer chocar las ramas entre ellas, huesos de animales encontrados en el bosque: una naturaleza siempre presente.
«Los nadadores nocturnos» es una autobiografía que se lee como una novela; un libro que da gusto recorrer despacio, siguiendo el rastro ajeno de las huellas en la tierra húmeda o las marcas dibujadas en el agua por las brazadas de quien nos acompaña.
Peter Rock me sorprendió antes. Primero, con «Mi abandono»; después, con «Klickitat». Es magnífica su manera de amalgamar el misterio con la nostalgia y enredar la trama en visiones de la Naturaleza que, muchas veces, rozan lo onírico. En «Los nadadores nocturnos», nuevamente, lo hace. Aunque esta vez son retazos de su propia historia los que se cuentan; trozos de recuerdos, experiencias, material intertextual de artistas –escritores, pintores, fotógrafos–. Y el modo de narrar pasajes que se conectan para construir un paisaje mayor, una mirada melancólica del mundo.
El encuentro con la señora Abel durante un verano hace 20 años: una vecina de la que pocos saben y que él se dedicará a conocer, siempre de forma velada, con cierta distancia de por medio mientras practican natación por las noches. El recupero e intercambio de viejas cartas con una exnovia. Los libros que le lee a sus hijas, y las preguntas que, en consonancia, ellas le hacen. La mirada cambiante sobre sus padres, erosionada por el paso del tiempo; y la mirada cambiante sobre uno mismo: lo que uno fue, lo que pretendió ser, lo que nunca logró, o lo que sí. El calor del verano, el frío del invierno, los muelles, el lago, las olas, el ruido que el viento produce al hacer chocar las ramas entre ellas, huesos de animales encontrados en el bosque: una naturaleza siempre presente.
«Los nadadores nocturnos» es una autobiografía que se lee como una novela; un libro que da gusto recorrer despacio, siguiendo el rastro ajeno de las huellas en la tierra húmeda o las marcas dibujadas en el agua por las brazadas de quien nos acompaña.
June 21, 2019
First, full disclosure - I've known Peter Rock since 2006, when we were both writing residents at Caldera, an artist colony in Sisters, Oregon. Or at least, I thought I knew Pete. After reading this book, I feel I know him so much more, as both a gifted author and as a person who sees the world in that quiet, layered, deeply conscious way that only certain artists and writers have.
The book is called a novel, but it's more a work of creative nonfiction, filtered through the lens of memory, where Pete, as a young man of 26, returns to his family's summer cabin in Wisconsin during a transitional period of his life. The night swimmers in the book are Pete and a widow, Claire Abel, who lives next door. The two of them begin a relationship that simmers just a hair below being sexual, as they meet during the summer of 1994 to swim together after dark. Pete eventually loses touch with Abel, who is (deliberately?) elusive and enigmatic, but her memory haunts him as he works his way back to his parent's home in Utah, where he spends some time at an isolated farmstead writing and reminiscing about Abel and other women from his past. He ultimately moves to California and meets the woman who becomes his wife, and then to Portland, Oregon, where he carves out a career as a successful author and college instructor.
Much of the book focuses on bits of writing from authors he admires, as well as emails from former girlfriends, photographs of items from his past, and tidbits from his life as a father to two daughters who, like him, are fascinated with all things ethereal - faeries, ghosts, past lives, and psychic phenomena. Eventually, he returns to Wisconsin with his family and runs into Abel, where she meets his daughters and obliquely answers his questions about where she has been during the past twenty years.
The book reads more as an exploration of who we are as people as we glide through life, than as a novel, but the subtext is not gratuitous and rings true as an autobiographical exploration of a young man's attempts to sort out who he is and whether his choices have been wise. Although this story is deeply personal for Pete, it feels universal, in away that is wholly inexplicable, compelling, and thought-provoking. I will definitely read this book again; but, for now, I find myself wanting to just find a quiet place to sit and ponder its mysteries, along with its truths.
The book is called a novel, but it's more a work of creative nonfiction, filtered through the lens of memory, where Pete, as a young man of 26, returns to his family's summer cabin in Wisconsin during a transitional period of his life. The night swimmers in the book are Pete and a widow, Claire Abel, who lives next door. The two of them begin a relationship that simmers just a hair below being sexual, as they meet during the summer of 1994 to swim together after dark. Pete eventually loses touch with Abel, who is (deliberately?) elusive and enigmatic, but her memory haunts him as he works his way back to his parent's home in Utah, where he spends some time at an isolated farmstead writing and reminiscing about Abel and other women from his past. He ultimately moves to California and meets the woman who becomes his wife, and then to Portland, Oregon, where he carves out a career as a successful author and college instructor.
Much of the book focuses on bits of writing from authors he admires, as well as emails from former girlfriends, photographs of items from his past, and tidbits from his life as a father to two daughters who, like him, are fascinated with all things ethereal - faeries, ghosts, past lives, and psychic phenomena. Eventually, he returns to Wisconsin with his family and runs into Abel, where she meets his daughters and obliquely answers his questions about where she has been during the past twenty years.
The book reads more as an exploration of who we are as people as we glide through life, than as a novel, but the subtext is not gratuitous and rings true as an autobiographical exploration of a young man's attempts to sort out who he is and whether his choices have been wise. Although this story is deeply personal for Pete, it feels universal, in away that is wholly inexplicable, compelling, and thought-provoking. I will definitely read this book again; but, for now, I find myself wanting to just find a quiet place to sit and ponder its mysteries, along with its truths.
March 10, 2021
This is definitely self-indulgent sometimes, and it reminded me in a bad way of guys I went to college with who wanted to be writers, but ultimately, it won me over, because Rock is a very good writer, and because it reminded me intensely of what it felt like to be in my 20s and completely unsure of who I was, who I wanted to be, and even what I would do next.
The main character of this novel is a writer in his... 40s?- who is looking back to when he was in his mid-20s and kind of at a loss. He was staying with his parents at their vacation house by Lake Michigan. He begins a sort of friendship with a woman who lives there, Mrs. Abel, a very recent widow. They both like swimming far out into the lake at night, so they get in the habit of swimming together, then have strange, mostly honest conversations in the dark of the night. Then... something happens. And he never forgets her, and he always wonders what became of her.
Definitely the worst part of the book are excerpts from his letters to women he was trying to impress so they would be willing to sleep with him, and from his journals, in which he tries to convince himself that he is an artist and worth sleeping with. But, as I said, the excellent writing won me over, and I have a thing for unpredictable conversations, and they're plentiful in this novel, and there's a mystery at the heart of this book that reminded me that while I mostly, maybe 98% of the time, believe that the things that happen in this world have to do with cause and effect, objective reality, science, there is that other 2%.
The main character of this novel is a writer in his... 40s?- who is looking back to when he was in his mid-20s and kind of at a loss. He was staying with his parents at their vacation house by Lake Michigan. He begins a sort of friendship with a woman who lives there, Mrs. Abel, a very recent widow. They both like swimming far out into the lake at night, so they get in the habit of swimming together, then have strange, mostly honest conversations in the dark of the night. Then... something happens. And he never forgets her, and he always wonders what became of her.
Definitely the worst part of the book are excerpts from his letters to women he was trying to impress so they would be willing to sleep with him, and from his journals, in which he tries to convince himself that he is an artist and worth sleeping with. But, as I said, the excellent writing won me over, and I have a thing for unpredictable conversations, and they're plentiful in this novel, and there's a mystery at the heart of this book that reminded me that while I mostly, maybe 98% of the time, believe that the things that happen in this world have to do with cause and effect, objective reality, science, there is that other 2%.
November 25, 2022
2,5/5 ⭐️
Antes que nada, quiero agradecer a ediciones godot por mandarme este ejemplar!
Ahora, hablando del libro, fue raro. La primera parte me encantó, la escritura es muy buena y me atrapó enseguida. Me gustaba la historia y como se iban desarrollando los personajes. Me gusta mucho nadar así que esa parte me encantaba.
Mi gran “problema” fue la segunda mitad del libro. Sentía que la historia no iba a ningún lugar y no leía cosas muy interesantes para mi. Me costaba concentrarme porque no encontraba nada que me sorprendiera o me motivara a seguir leyendo.
Creo que es una buena historia pero le faltó bastante, desde mi punto de vista. Había potencial.
De todas formas quien esté interesado léalo porque puede gustarle como a muchos <3 yo soy solo una entre tantos. Gracias a la editorial por esta oportunidad que siempre es bienvenida y se aprende algo!
Antes que nada, quiero agradecer a ediciones godot por mandarme este ejemplar!
Ahora, hablando del libro, fue raro. La primera parte me encantó, la escritura es muy buena y me atrapó enseguida. Me gustaba la historia y como se iban desarrollando los personajes. Me gusta mucho nadar así que esa parte me encantaba.
Mi gran “problema” fue la segunda mitad del libro. Sentía que la historia no iba a ningún lugar y no leía cosas muy interesantes para mi. Me costaba concentrarme porque no encontraba nada que me sorprendiera o me motivara a seguir leyendo.
Creo que es una buena historia pero le faltó bastante, desde mi punto de vista. Había potencial.
De todas formas quien esté interesado léalo porque puede gustarle como a muchos <3 yo soy solo una entre tantos. Gracias a la editorial por esta oportunidad que siempre es bienvenida y se aprende algo!
June 2, 2022
En la vida, uno de los mayores placeres, una de las formas más importantes de pasar el tiempo, es soñar despierto.
Mi primer novela de Peter Rock, y aunque me hubiese gustado empezar por alguna de las otras no me pareció una mala puerta de entrada. Los fenómenos extraños están, aunque en menor medida, y la escritura que pareciera preguntarse cosas todo el tiempo es protagonista. En particular de este libro me gustó el tinte autobiográfico, esa duda que me sembró en cada página de si lo que estaba leyendo devenía de una experiencia personal o de un producto de la imaginación del autor.
En fin, me gustó mucho y próximamente se viene Mi abandono.
Mi primer novela de Peter Rock, y aunque me hubiese gustado empezar por alguna de las otras no me pareció una mala puerta de entrada. Los fenómenos extraños están, aunque en menor medida, y la escritura que pareciera preguntarse cosas todo el tiempo es protagonista. En particular de este libro me gustó el tinte autobiográfico, esa duda que me sembró en cada página de si lo que estaba leyendo devenía de una experiencia personal o de un producto de la imaginación del autor.
En fin, me gustó mucho y próximamente se viene Mi abandono.
July 10, 2019
This small book is elegantly written, and a lovely summer read. The narrator tells a wonderful story of summers spent a the summer cabin at the lake, swimming long distances at night and suddenly finding himself with a companion. Some of the most beautiful writing I've ever encountered in this book, the rhythm of the story at times even conveying the feeling of swimming with long strokes and glides. There is more to the story than just the summers at the lake; however, I tend to believe in letting stories speak for themselves.
September 3, 2023
If my boyfriend sent me letters like those, I’d move to Canada and dump him, too.
This one felt kind of juvenile. Like a college writing assignment. The audio is ok, just kind of blah… but the story is blah, so.
I liked the Lake Michigan references and the descriptions of swimming.
This one felt kind of juvenile. Like a college writing assignment. The audio is ok, just kind of blah… but the story is blah, so.
I liked the Lake Michigan references and the descriptions of swimming.
October 25, 2021
Oregon writer endorsed by Ursula, first half was very good and second half was too ethereal for me with no conclusion. Glad I read it.
March 8, 2020
Beautifully and vividly written. Seems like a writing exercise disguised as a mystery story. A quick read!
October 28, 2022
Shades of The Graduate but nothing ever really happens.
April 26, 2020
The Night Swimmers kept me intrigued and turning pages even as I was mystified by the point of the book until I read it a second time. The setting is 1995 at a spot near Lake Michigan where a variety of currents and drop offs exist below the surface. A widow, Mrs. Abel, about 52, and recent college graduate, Rock, age 26, swim nude together during the summer with almost no conversation. She has recently moved and been widowed there; he has for years spent summers there because it is where his parents, grandparents, and other family members have vacation homes.
The bond/attraction between the two seems strong, the relationship one of uncertain purpose.
Rock says, “To swim with another person—out in the open water at night, across a distance, without stopping—is like taking a walk without the pressure, the weight of having to carry a conversation, to bring what is inside to the outside” (3).
Plot details and summary below.
Rock is a writer and professor of creative writing who moves to California “after that summer of 1995, to work on my writing in the company of other people” (217).
“When I met my wife, I lived in Palo Alto … I knew that I had never felt this way about anyone, and that this might be my last chance to learn to be with another person, not alone” (218).
At first glance this is a coming of age story in which Rock reflects on the two major woman in his life before his wife. In addition to memories of his time with Mrs. Abel, he shares excerpts from letters he wrote to a woman he lived with even earlier, another writer. Regarding her, Rock makes the point when they were together neither of them knew how to be direct, to acknowledge and accept feelings or to understand how talking can clarify and explain things that haven’t been put into words.
By juxtaposing his present life with his memories and focusing on these early attachments, However, Rock does more than examine his experiences with women and relationships. He shows both the young, single man he was and the married father he is now; tells an entertaining story; and perhaps, creates closure for himself.
In addition to correspondence with his former girl friend, the book comprises comments about Rock’s grandfather and his writing, Rock’s wife, and his daughters, and enough references—images, lyrics, and texts—to create four pages of end notes.
Both women turn up in Rock’s life after he is happily married. The former girl friend first lets Rock know that she’s kept their correspondence and then, at his request, mails it to him, although it is lost for a number of years. When he finds it, he reflects on his younger self and on that relationship.
Mrs. Abel reappears physically years later when Rock is at his aunt’s home on Lake Michigan with his daughters. He asks about all of the letters he sent to her which went unanswered and about a story she did send to him in parts. They talk about the last night they swam together when she disappeared and about how she found a space underwater which felt wonderful, a space where she believed she could breathe.
The novel ends after Rock’s daughters have met and swam with Mrs. Able and she has again disappeared at the same time a newspaper article describes children seeing a woman’s body in the water, but not telling anyone for hours and the search for the woman being unsuccessful.
The bond/attraction between the two seems strong, the relationship one of uncertain purpose.
Rock says, “To swim with another person—out in the open water at night, across a distance, without stopping—is like taking a walk without the pressure, the weight of having to carry a conversation, to bring what is inside to the outside” (3).
Plot details and summary below.
Rock is a writer and professor of creative writing who moves to California “after that summer of 1995, to work on my writing in the company of other people” (217).
“When I met my wife, I lived in Palo Alto … I knew that I had never felt this way about anyone, and that this might be my last chance to learn to be with another person, not alone” (218).
At first glance this is a coming of age story in which Rock reflects on the two major woman in his life before his wife. In addition to memories of his time with Mrs. Abel, he shares excerpts from letters he wrote to a woman he lived with even earlier, another writer. Regarding her, Rock makes the point when they were together neither of them knew how to be direct, to acknowledge and accept feelings or to understand how talking can clarify and explain things that haven’t been put into words.
By juxtaposing his present life with his memories and focusing on these early attachments, However, Rock does more than examine his experiences with women and relationships. He shows both the young, single man he was and the married father he is now; tells an entertaining story; and perhaps, creates closure for himself.
In addition to correspondence with his former girl friend, the book comprises comments about Rock’s grandfather and his writing, Rock’s wife, and his daughters, and enough references—images, lyrics, and texts—to create four pages of end notes.
Both women turn up in Rock’s life after he is happily married. The former girl friend first lets Rock know that she’s kept their correspondence and then, at his request, mails it to him, although it is lost for a number of years. When he finds it, he reflects on his younger self and on that relationship.
Mrs. Abel reappears physically years later when Rock is at his aunt’s home on Lake Michigan with his daughters. He asks about all of the letters he sent to her which went unanswered and about a story she did send to him in parts. They talk about the last night they swam together when she disappeared and about how she found a space underwater which felt wonderful, a space where she believed she could breathe.
The novel ends after Rock’s daughters have met and swam with Mrs. Able and she has again disappeared at the same time a newspaper article describes children seeing a woman’s body in the water, but not telling anyone for hours and the search for the woman being unsuccessful.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 22, 2018
‘And yet to avoid, to forget is a kind of betrayal, pretending that there’s no continuity between myself then and now.’
I admit to never having read any previous books by Peter Rock, so coming to this autobiographical novel was a bit like stepping into mid-conversation, or arriving at a party two hours after it started. I feel that had I read some of his other work I might have got more out of this, but as it is, I felt that this was a rewarding and beguiling work which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The basic premise is this: the older writer that is Peter Rock looks back on one particular summer when, in 1994 as a twenty-six-year-old, he visited his parents’ house in Wisconsin and meets their neighbour Mrs Abel (whose first name, Claire, we don’t learn until much later in the book). The pair share a passion for swimming at night in Lake Michigan, and the languid, sexually-charged nature of their platonic relationship – younger man, older widow – is played out in these watery adventures. By the end of the summer Mrs Abel disappears and the central character - the ‘I’ of the book who both is ‘Peter Rock’ and yet is a fictionalised version of himself – feels her absence for years afterwards. The book shifts in narrative time between the past and the present, where ‘Peter’ is now married with two daughters, and it also uses photographs and letters and other ‘texts’ interspersed throughout the book (in an afterword the author says the book ‘is in conversation with many other texts, artefacts, images and songs’). These give added reference and structure to the story, but also make it very difficult to classify the book as simply an ‘autobiographical novel’ – for indeed what is the nature of that genre? The author is at one and the same time the writer of the book and the central character, a real version of himself and also a fictionalised one. In a parallel self-referentiality there is a text of story within the book which is torn in two, and finally united. This story may or may not be about Mrs Abel. When she is asked if it is, she replies: ‘It’s not so simple – you should know that. It’s a story.’
This is a lyrical, reflective book that plays with the intertextuality of the form and is a wonderful exploration of memory and our relationship with our past self-selves. It is a book about searching for meanings and living with moments of importance in our life that only later do we recognise. The ending – which I won’t spoil here – is suitably understated yet startling, and brings the book back to its heart, to its beginning: water, and swimming. I found this utterly engaging, and profoundly beautiful in its quiet, meditative style. It makes me want to go and read his other books, and that can only be a good sign. Definitely recommended.
I admit to never having read any previous books by Peter Rock, so coming to this autobiographical novel was a bit like stepping into mid-conversation, or arriving at a party two hours after it started. I feel that had I read some of his other work I might have got more out of this, but as it is, I felt that this was a rewarding and beguiling work which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The basic premise is this: the older writer that is Peter Rock looks back on one particular summer when, in 1994 as a twenty-six-year-old, he visited his parents’ house in Wisconsin and meets their neighbour Mrs Abel (whose first name, Claire, we don’t learn until much later in the book). The pair share a passion for swimming at night in Lake Michigan, and the languid, sexually-charged nature of their platonic relationship – younger man, older widow – is played out in these watery adventures. By the end of the summer Mrs Abel disappears and the central character - the ‘I’ of the book who both is ‘Peter Rock’ and yet is a fictionalised version of himself – feels her absence for years afterwards. The book shifts in narrative time between the past and the present, where ‘Peter’ is now married with two daughters, and it also uses photographs and letters and other ‘texts’ interspersed throughout the book (in an afterword the author says the book ‘is in conversation with many other texts, artefacts, images and songs’). These give added reference and structure to the story, but also make it very difficult to classify the book as simply an ‘autobiographical novel’ – for indeed what is the nature of that genre? The author is at one and the same time the writer of the book and the central character, a real version of himself and also a fictionalised one. In a parallel self-referentiality there is a text of story within the book which is torn in two, and finally united. This story may or may not be about Mrs Abel. When she is asked if it is, she replies: ‘It’s not so simple – you should know that. It’s a story.’
This is a lyrical, reflective book that plays with the intertextuality of the form and is a wonderful exploration of memory and our relationship with our past self-selves. It is a book about searching for meanings and living with moments of importance in our life that only later do we recognise. The ending – which I won’t spoil here – is suitably understated yet startling, and brings the book back to its heart, to its beginning: water, and swimming. I found this utterly engaging, and profoundly beautiful in its quiet, meditative style. It makes me want to go and read his other books, and that can only be a good sign. Definitely recommended.
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