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Night Swimming
Filled with admiration for his characters and the hope they bring to their day to day dilemmas, Night Swimming has affirmed Pete Fromm's reputation as one of the nation's best writers.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
Pete Fromm
32 books217 followersPete Fromm is a five time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Literary Award for his novels IF NOT FOR THIS, AS COOL AS I AM and HOW ALL THIS STARTED, a story collection, DRY RAIN, and the memoir, INDIAN CREEK CHRONICLES. The film of AS COOL AS I AM, starring Claire Danes, James Marsden, and Sarah Bolger was released in 2013. He is the author of four other short story collections and has published over two hundred stories in magazines. He is on the faculty of Oregon’s Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA Program, and lives in Montana with his family.
http://www.petefromm.com
http://www.petefromm.com
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 1, 2025
this was disappointing. surprisingly elementary, like stories you’d read on a standardized test
April 25, 2021
Please don't shirk away from my one-star rating. The writing, character development and stories were very well done. My problem was (is) that every story dealt with loss - whether is was due to a death, or an absentee parent (suddenly absent, missing fathers dominated). I was left feeling profound sadness over my own losses; I was reminded of deaths in my own family the last few years, and in the last few months, the broken relationships not fixed before the deaths occurred. I found no joy reading this collection, and I am a huge fan of the short story, and of short story collections. I wish I could give a different rating.
September 7, 2012
I'm always impressed with how much emotion Fromm can convey in these short stories. He's one of the best writers working today, and this collection only affirms that. "Night Swimming" is beautiful.
May 29, 2021
Fromm is one of my favorite writers. He has an intoxicating ability to craft stories that draw me in, regardless of the storyline and characters involved. This volume of short stories examines the delicacy and resiliency of the human spirit through loss. I finished the book feeling slightly depressed, yet also reinvigorated. The first short story, “How All This Started” is taken from Fromm’s novel of the same name. The selection not only stands on its own, but it takes on an entirely new context within Night Swimming. Each of the thirteen stories has its own merits, and I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite; they are all equalling compelling. Fromm’s writing is pleasure to read. Although Fromm’s writing should be savored and slowly digested, I can’t help but devour it. Similar to Fromm’s other books, this work will stay with you long after the reading is complete.
September 3, 2017
This collection of stories is a top notch read by a strong and underrated writer. Fromm's characters are rich and fully formed and the situations they find themselves in are heartbreakingly real. Fromm is also a prose stylist: his language measured but descriptive and often memorable.
June 2, 2020
good but the stories are pretty dark
September 21, 2020
These are well written. Fromm really puts you inside the story & within all the emotions each character holds.
February 20, 2014
This is a collection of short stories by Pete Fromm published in 1999. These stories are character driven and are written with subtlety and nuance. I would recommend against reading all the stories at one time as they all feature characters struggling with life with little hope of overcoming their struggles. Some of my favorites:
"How This All Started" is told from the perspective a 10 year old boy whose older sister is steadily deteriorating from mental illness. The boy's love and protectiveness of his sister causes him to go along with her increasingly erratic behavior and his somewhat detached observations of his parents' attempts to help her make their heartbreak all to real to the reader
"Night Swimming" is told from the perspective of a young man who quits school and his job to work as a janitor at his mother's nursing home and move into her empty house. He goes through her house and gently questions her looking for evidence for a time when her life had meaning or happiness. His obsession is contrasted with his sister who has moved on with a life with meaning and happiness but still loves her brother
"Black Tie and Blue Jeans" shows the owner of a drive in forcing himself to go a chamber of commerce event where he meets a young, attractive woman who remembers him from her days as a carhop at the drive in. She tells him that all the carhops had crushes on him back in the day which ends up just emphasizing the loneliness of his current life compared to her having moved on
"Wind", "Freezeout" and "The Gravy on the Cake" all anticipate Fromm's later novel"As Cool As I Am." All are told from perspective of an adolescent daughter whose dad has left or is in the process of leaving the family and all include plot twists and dysfunction that are explored in more detail in his later novel
Again, these are great stories, but the unity in despair make them better read over a period of time
"How This All Started" is told from the perspective a 10 year old boy whose older sister is steadily deteriorating from mental illness. The boy's love and protectiveness of his sister causes him to go along with her increasingly erratic behavior and his somewhat detached observations of his parents' attempts to help her make their heartbreak all to real to the reader
"Night Swimming" is told from the perspective of a young man who quits school and his job to work as a janitor at his mother's nursing home and move into her empty house. He goes through her house and gently questions her looking for evidence for a time when her life had meaning or happiness. His obsession is contrasted with his sister who has moved on with a life with meaning and happiness but still loves her brother
"Black Tie and Blue Jeans" shows the owner of a drive in forcing himself to go a chamber of commerce event where he meets a young, attractive woman who remembers him from her days as a carhop at the drive in. She tells him that all the carhops had crushes on him back in the day which ends up just emphasizing the loneliness of his current life compared to her having moved on
"Wind", "Freezeout" and "The Gravy on the Cake" all anticipate Fromm's later novel"As Cool As I Am." All are told from perspective of an adolescent daughter whose dad has left or is in the process of leaving the family and all include plot twists and dysfunction that are explored in more detail in his later novel
Again, these are great stories, but the unity in despair make them better read over a period of time
May 1, 2011
A Bookslut review of As Cool As I Am (paired with the possible Dar Williams allusion in the title) made me curious to check out the book, but when the library didn't have a copy in, I ended up leaving with a collection of Fromm's short stories, Night Swimming, instead.
It's probably unfortunate that I read this book right after The Torturer's Apprentice, another short story collection, because The Torturer's Apprentice was SO good, and so stylistically strong, that I was jolted to find that Fromm's stories are neither so self-contained nor so tidy as Biguenet's. The stories in Night Swimming are more like excerpts from or sketches for novels - and in fact, I realized that at least two stories from this book Fromm later did turn into novels. "How All This Started" features two characters who pop up again a couple of years later in a book by the same name, and "The Gravy on the Cake" became As Cool As I Am. I felt like I didn't understand the characters especially well, that their stories spilled out onto pages before and after the pages I was allowed to read, and while Fromm writes well and captured some interesting moments in these stories, I'm not sure they really worked as short stories. Or maybe they just don't work in the definition of short story I have in my head right now, which is shaped by having just read The Torturer's Apprentice. It's hard to say.
Mostly I feel really ambivalent about this book.
It's probably unfortunate that I read this book right after The Torturer's Apprentice, another short story collection, because The Torturer's Apprentice was SO good, and so stylistically strong, that I was jolted to find that Fromm's stories are neither so self-contained nor so tidy as Biguenet's. The stories in Night Swimming are more like excerpts from or sketches for novels - and in fact, I realized that at least two stories from this book Fromm later did turn into novels. "How All This Started" features two characters who pop up again a couple of years later in a book by the same name, and "The Gravy on the Cake" became As Cool As I Am. I felt like I didn't understand the characters especially well, that their stories spilled out onto pages before and after the pages I was allowed to read, and while Fromm writes well and captured some interesting moments in these stories, I'm not sure they really worked as short stories. Or maybe they just don't work in the definition of short story I have in my head right now, which is shaped by having just read The Torturer's Apprentice. It's hard to say.
Mostly I feel really ambivalent about this book.
February 19, 2012
It’s high time, don’t you think, that I read some Pete Fromm? The blurb on the back of this book says he has published over 100 stories. I can’t even wrap my mind around that number. It’s amazing. And they are all so subtle.
The revelations and wrappings up at the end of Fromm’s stories sneak up on us and the characters. After the last word, we know we’ve experienced a full turnaround but aren’t quite sure how he led us there. Then, on looking back, we see how indirectly he’s done it. For instance, in “Night Swimming,” Joe can’t let go of the idea of his mother’s having had an alternate, adventurous life, but what he is really saying (and can only say in this indirect way) is that he is still longing for his own vivid experiences. In “The Investigator,” the father manages to ask for his son’s forgiveness without directly doing so, by talking about what he would say if a plane were about to crash and he knew people would be listening to him on the black box after he died. It’s a masterful and quick but deeply moving connection between these estranged men. In “The Raw Material of Ash,” the narrator is only able to voice is fear that his marriage is dying when he realizes the person he is speaking to is deaf. The metaphors in these stories—for instance, the “hot boxes” the “Ash” narrator constructs for the funeral home representing the ashes that his marriage will become--are equally subtle but powerful.
The revelations and wrappings up at the end of Fromm’s stories sneak up on us and the characters. After the last word, we know we’ve experienced a full turnaround but aren’t quite sure how he led us there. Then, on looking back, we see how indirectly he’s done it. For instance, in “Night Swimming,” Joe can’t let go of the idea of his mother’s having had an alternate, adventurous life, but what he is really saying (and can only say in this indirect way) is that he is still longing for his own vivid experiences. In “The Investigator,” the father manages to ask for his son’s forgiveness without directly doing so, by talking about what he would say if a plane were about to crash and he knew people would be listening to him on the black box after he died. It’s a masterful and quick but deeply moving connection between these estranged men. In “The Raw Material of Ash,” the narrator is only able to voice is fear that his marriage is dying when he realizes the person he is speaking to is deaf. The metaphors in these stories—for instance, the “hot boxes” the “Ash” narrator constructs for the funeral home representing the ashes that his marriage will become--are equally subtle but powerful.
August 9, 2009
Pete Fromm is a good writer, and his short stories are well-crafted and affecting. Only problem is, I don't enjoy short stories all that much, and every single one in the collection was depressing. The cover blurbs mention "hope," but I encountered very little of it in "Night Swimming."
February 28, 2012
Pete Fromm is a great story-teller and a master of the short story. He is right there with O'Henry and V.S. Pritchett. Not only are his stories compelling but his characters are interesting and real. I highly recommend anything written by Fromm.
February 2, 2013
Pete Fromm's characters are flawed but lovely; he is full of sympathy and tenderness for them. Many witty moments: humor to go with the pathos; some stories are very sad. I especially enjoyed "Black Tie and Blue Jeans" and "Cowbird."
July 6, 2014
evocative - almost too much truth
September 8, 2016
While a couple of the short stories were interesting, most were a little trashy for my liking and had me skipping forward to the next and the next until the last one which I really disliked.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews