What do you think?
Rate this book
The Swimming Pool Season
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.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
28 people are currently reading
265 people want to read
About the author
Rose Tremain
79 books1,105 followersDame Rose Tremain is an acclaimed English novelist and short story writer, celebrated for her distinctive approach to historical fiction and her focus on characters who exist on the margins of society. Educated at the Sorbonne and the University of East Anglia, where she later taught creative writing and served as Chancellor, Tremain has produced a rich body of work spanning novels, short stories, plays, and memoir. Influenced by writers such as William Golding and Gabriel García Márquez, her narratives often blend psychological depth with lyrical prose.
Among her many honors, she has received the Whitbread Award for Music and Silence, the Orange Prize for The Road Home, and the National Jewish Book Award for The Gustav Sonata. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Restoration and has been recognized multiple times by the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. In 2020, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. Tremain lives in Norfolk and continues to write, with her recent novel Absolutely and Forever shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize.
Among her many honors, she has received the Whitbread Award for Music and Silence, the Orange Prize for The Road Home, and the National Jewish Book Award for The Gustav Sonata. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Restoration and has been recognized multiple times by the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. In 2020, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. Tremain lives in Norfolk and continues to write, with her recent novel Absolutely and Forever shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
December 24, 2010
I not only own a first edition of this book, I actually have the original review of the book by Richard Eder. Tremain takes you to Pomerac and into the lives of its residents in such a way that you're practically their neighbor. I LOVE this book. Tremain is by far my favorite author and she writes beautifully. If you like finding literary treasures, dig this!
November 4, 2012
Oh what do we do with Rose Tremain? She either writes absolute corkers - Restoration, The Colour, The Road Home - or she misses the mark by a country mile - and yet the makings of a great book are hidden in there somewhere. Her better books are her later books, which is encouraging - and also those books that tend to concentrate on the story, or the journey, of one person, as opposed to an ensemble cast which takes a while to come together.
This falls very much into the latter camp. The first half or more of the book stumbles around like a poor man's soap opera, introducing more and more characters, many of whom even by the end of the book you are still not only wondering who they were, but what actually they were doing there at all. "The Swimming Pool Season"'s case is complicated even further by the fact that there are actually two soap operas going on simultaneously here - one in rural France, the other in Oxford - with very little real interplay between the one and the other.
But, like all her books, it is dotted with little slivers of gold, small comments on the state of mankind that make you realize that the almost painful at times non events that make up the book are a bit more than a superficial soap opera.
Why do people read books? To be educated about life? To find enlightenment on something or another? To be entertained? This book manages to do all three - but in far too small doses, and it takes far too long to achieve it.You stick with Rose Tremain books until the end though, because you know they'll get better eventually. However, you also know that this one, like too many other of her books, will become completely unmemorable in a few weeks time.
So frustrating - but I still have another two or three of hers to read - and I'll read them all!
This falls very much into the latter camp. The first half or more of the book stumbles around like a poor man's soap opera, introducing more and more characters, many of whom even by the end of the book you are still not only wondering who they were, but what actually they were doing there at all. "The Swimming Pool Season"'s case is complicated even further by the fact that there are actually two soap operas going on simultaneously here - one in rural France, the other in Oxford - with very little real interplay between the one and the other.
But, like all her books, it is dotted with little slivers of gold, small comments on the state of mankind that make you realize that the almost painful at times non events that make up the book are a bit more than a superficial soap opera.
Why do people read books? To be educated about life? To find enlightenment on something or another? To be entertained? This book manages to do all three - but in far too small doses, and it takes far too long to achieve it.You stick with Rose Tremain books until the end though, because you know they'll get better eventually. However, you also know that this one, like too many other of her books, will become completely unmemorable in a few weeks time.
So frustrating - but I still have another two or three of hers to read - and I'll read them all!
June 5, 2016
Rose Tremain writes a story about our yearning for love and passion and all her characters are ready to drop everything in their pursuit of the unattainable. But love proves elusive.
She takes a full cast of characters, mostly middle aged, from two distinct walks of life, Oxford academia and rural French village, and all share a yearning for love. Marriages and relationships are examined and if not moribund most are certainly devoid of passion.
Each character has fantasies and, some, wild desires, showing they haven't given up on again enjoying those first exciting tender expressions of love, and each achieves a varying degree of intimacy.
Marriages might be grown stale, protagonists seem weary of life but fanciful thoughts still surface fuelling sensual longings and carnal desires, and soon each character seems hell bent on some reckless activity and daring choice that can only lead to chaos in their well ordered lives.
From the wide eyed innocence of Agnes to the disillusioned experience of Larry and Miriam, each character reveals their own dissatisfaction with their present day lives reflecting upon opportunities missed, or choices made with misgivings and regretted later, or simply unrequited loves. Lives lived without passion or meaning, but with bitter acceptance. Torment and disappointment fuel whimsical day dreaming and memories surface of desires unfulfilled.
The story has great resonance for any reader, similarly ‘middle aged’ as through the intimate consciousness of strangers and through examining the inner lives of others we learn more about ourselves.
Spoilers alert
So in the small French village of Pomerac, Nadia now 48 dyes her hair champagne blonde burns a candle for the widower Herve Priere, Pomerac’s doctor, having packed her elderly husband Claude off to a nursing home in Northern France.
Herve’s niece Agnes has come to stay and this young lady beguiles all the men she meets. Agnes befriends Larry, an Englishman abroad, and failed business man in a stale marriage to Miriam who is conveniently summoned home to Oxford as her mother is dying. Agnes sees an opportunity and views Larry both as a surrogate father and an experienced lover. She is soon asking him very personal questions as to whether she should sleep with her fiancé, Luc, when he comes to stay. Her virginal state sets the cat amongst the pigeons and first, Larry imagines their unsatisfactory first sexual experience as Agnes surrenders her virginity to an unpractised lover; and then Xavier is seduced as Agnes wants a wild fling somehow knowing her marriage will in all probability lack the passion she desires.
In this engaging steamy novel our author depicts differing sexual appetites, and relationships imbued with varying degrees of intimacy, ‘The lines of love or longing, if you drew them, they’d criss-cross Pomerac like a tangle of wool.’ Certainly Agnes is not to be denied and she wants to know passionate love before her marriage robs her forever of such euphoria, and others in the French village, or in Oxford, are looking for one last fling before decrepitude sets in.
The elderly Mallelou, grumpy and brutish, used to work as a signalman on the railways but progress overtook him making him redundant, and now he lazes away his days on a small farm holding leaving his long suffering wife, Gervais, to do the heavy duty work. Gervais is celebrating her 49th birthday, and finds plenty of time to reflect upon their moribund marriage now devoid of any intimacy. Gervaise is in the milking shed and besides her cattle she is ''a little stick of a person beside them, so meagrely fleshed, her breasts lie flat on her ribs like soft purses.’' But in Gervais passion burns brightly and her dark desires ensure she is far from chaste seizing any opportunity to take her mysterious and younger lodger, Klaus, to her bed for passionate sex. Meanwhile her husband Mallelou remembers his sexual prime and likes to boast to his son, Xavier, of his German wartime romance with Marisa, ‘ I use to bugger her. Come in her arse. That’s what she liked.’
Miriam returns to England when her mother, Leni, has a fall and is admitted to hospital in Oxford. We soon learn that Dr Oswald Carlton Williams, ‘Doctor O,’ has had a long term romance with Bernice Atwood that is far from passionate but suffices for both of them it would seem until Miriam returns home and the elderly Dr O admits to her that he has always loved her. This is doubly unfortunate as Bernice suspects that after all these years she might be pregnant just as she realises that Dr O doesn’t love her as much as he had upped he might. Meanwhile Dr O is reading the first graphic sex manual ‘The Joy of Sex’ to see if he can inject his sexual activity with moe passion.
One by one all the relationships are examined and found wanting and there is a sense of dysfunction spreading thorough the sleepy little village of Pomerac. It is apparent that each character is unfulfilled in some way and is looking for more from life than their current relationship affords. The village is a seething vortex of affections and jealousies, and longings and unrequited loves, and carnal desires that are, only with great difficulty, suppressed.
She takes a full cast of characters, mostly middle aged, from two distinct walks of life, Oxford academia and rural French village, and all share a yearning for love. Marriages and relationships are examined and if not moribund most are certainly devoid of passion.
Each character has fantasies and, some, wild desires, showing they haven't given up on again enjoying those first exciting tender expressions of love, and each achieves a varying degree of intimacy.
Marriages might be grown stale, protagonists seem weary of life but fanciful thoughts still surface fuelling sensual longings and carnal desires, and soon each character seems hell bent on some reckless activity and daring choice that can only lead to chaos in their well ordered lives.
From the wide eyed innocence of Agnes to the disillusioned experience of Larry and Miriam, each character reveals their own dissatisfaction with their present day lives reflecting upon opportunities missed, or choices made with misgivings and regretted later, or simply unrequited loves. Lives lived without passion or meaning, but with bitter acceptance. Torment and disappointment fuel whimsical day dreaming and memories surface of desires unfulfilled.
The story has great resonance for any reader, similarly ‘middle aged’ as through the intimate consciousness of strangers and through examining the inner lives of others we learn more about ourselves.
Spoilers alert
So in the small French village of Pomerac, Nadia now 48 dyes her hair champagne blonde burns a candle for the widower Herve Priere, Pomerac’s doctor, having packed her elderly husband Claude off to a nursing home in Northern France.
Herve’s niece Agnes has come to stay and this young lady beguiles all the men she meets. Agnes befriends Larry, an Englishman abroad, and failed business man in a stale marriage to Miriam who is conveniently summoned home to Oxford as her mother is dying. Agnes sees an opportunity and views Larry both as a surrogate father and an experienced lover. She is soon asking him very personal questions as to whether she should sleep with her fiancé, Luc, when he comes to stay. Her virginal state sets the cat amongst the pigeons and first, Larry imagines their unsatisfactory first sexual experience as Agnes surrenders her virginity to an unpractised lover; and then Xavier is seduced as Agnes wants a wild fling somehow knowing her marriage will in all probability lack the passion she desires.
In this engaging steamy novel our author depicts differing sexual appetites, and relationships imbued with varying degrees of intimacy, ‘The lines of love or longing, if you drew them, they’d criss-cross Pomerac like a tangle of wool.’ Certainly Agnes is not to be denied and she wants to know passionate love before her marriage robs her forever of such euphoria, and others in the French village, or in Oxford, are looking for one last fling before decrepitude sets in.
The elderly Mallelou, grumpy and brutish, used to work as a signalman on the railways but progress overtook him making him redundant, and now he lazes away his days on a small farm holding leaving his long suffering wife, Gervais, to do the heavy duty work. Gervais is celebrating her 49th birthday, and finds plenty of time to reflect upon their moribund marriage now devoid of any intimacy. Gervaise is in the milking shed and besides her cattle she is ''a little stick of a person beside them, so meagrely fleshed, her breasts lie flat on her ribs like soft purses.’' But in Gervais passion burns brightly and her dark desires ensure she is far from chaste seizing any opportunity to take her mysterious and younger lodger, Klaus, to her bed for passionate sex. Meanwhile her husband Mallelou remembers his sexual prime and likes to boast to his son, Xavier, of his German wartime romance with Marisa, ‘ I use to bugger her. Come in her arse. That’s what she liked.’
Miriam returns to England when her mother, Leni, has a fall and is admitted to hospital in Oxford. We soon learn that Dr Oswald Carlton Williams, ‘Doctor O,’ has had a long term romance with Bernice Atwood that is far from passionate but suffices for both of them it would seem until Miriam returns home and the elderly Dr O admits to her that he has always loved her. This is doubly unfortunate as Bernice suspects that after all these years she might be pregnant just as she realises that Dr O doesn’t love her as much as he had upped he might. Meanwhile Dr O is reading the first graphic sex manual ‘The Joy of Sex’ to see if he can inject his sexual activity with moe passion.
One by one all the relationships are examined and found wanting and there is a sense of dysfunction spreading thorough the sleepy little village of Pomerac. It is apparent that each character is unfulfilled in some way and is looking for more from life than their current relationship affords. The village is a seething vortex of affections and jealousies, and longings and unrequited loves, and carnal desires that are, only with great difficulty, suppressed.
December 17, 2020
I do like Rose Tremain. Somehow she is able to unzip and gently peel back the multi layered bits of her characters' psyches, revealing the complexities and moral quandaries faced by us mere humans in our daily lives and carry ons. This is an early novel of hers, published in 1985, although she had already published 9 previous novels by then plus a bunch of other stuff. In reading a novel of hers written long before the wonderful and immersive likes of Music and Silence, The Road Home, and Merviel, you can see how her writing has become more masterful, more enigmatic, her characters richer and more complex.
In this novel, her observations are focussed on a small group of people at that ghastly stage of being known as middle age. With its associated crises. We reach 50, we just know that half our life has been done, and we better get a wriggle on to make the next 50 as good as it can be. Miriam and Larry have moved to the small community of Pomerac in the Dordogne region of France. Larry is ashamed at how his life has turned out, from being a successful swimming pool installer in England - a somewhat dubious unreliable way to get rich I would have thought - to losing everything and moving to France to lick his wounds and think about what to do next. Miriam is an artist, sort of of forced to accompany him, look after him but neglecting herself in the process. Gervaise lives next door to Larry and Miriam, a tough resourceful, enormously kind woman who farms the land, milks the cows. Her unpleasant husband with whom she has two sons, lives with her, as does her younger adorable lover Klaus. There is also a doctor, Herve; an elderly man Marechal; and a delightful Polish woman Nadia, also middle aged, who has recently put her husband Claude into care. All this sets up most of these characters to go through some form of mid life crisis, find a form of resolution, and move on.
Miriam has an elderly mother, Leni, who has become very unwell, requiring Miriam to travel back to Oxford to look after her, manage the affairs there. Miriam decides this is the perfect time to resurrect her artist path, and possibly dally with a local bookseller who has always been in love with Leni. Larry in turn decides to build the most amazing swimming pool he can, wanting to surprise Miriam with it on her eventual return. At the same time a potential dalliance with the young bethrothed niece of Herve is enticing. Nadia drowns her sorrows with vodka, Gervaise continues milking cows, agonising over her directionless son, her husband takes matters into his own hands, and steady lovely Klaus refuses to leave.
Not a lot happens really, but the writing is mesmerizing in the ordinariness of these lives, the day to day goings-on, the shall I/shan't I decisions they make. It only felt dated because there are no cell phones, no internet, no social media. None of that stuff. Just letters, the phone, telegrams. But aside from the physical differences, this tale, its characters, the conundrums they face, the unfolding of it all is as perfect for now as it was 35 years ago. Just perfect. This has to be a sign of good writing, that it continues to hold relevance.
In this novel, her observations are focussed on a small group of people at that ghastly stage of being known as middle age. With its associated crises. We reach 50, we just know that half our life has been done, and we better get a wriggle on to make the next 50 as good as it can be. Miriam and Larry have moved to the small community of Pomerac in the Dordogne region of France. Larry is ashamed at how his life has turned out, from being a successful swimming pool installer in England - a somewhat dubious unreliable way to get rich I would have thought - to losing everything and moving to France to lick his wounds and think about what to do next. Miriam is an artist, sort of of forced to accompany him, look after him but neglecting herself in the process. Gervaise lives next door to Larry and Miriam, a tough resourceful, enormously kind woman who farms the land, milks the cows. Her unpleasant husband with whom she has two sons, lives with her, as does her younger adorable lover Klaus. There is also a doctor, Herve; an elderly man Marechal; and a delightful Polish woman Nadia, also middle aged, who has recently put her husband Claude into care. All this sets up most of these characters to go through some form of mid life crisis, find a form of resolution, and move on.
Miriam has an elderly mother, Leni, who has become very unwell, requiring Miriam to travel back to Oxford to look after her, manage the affairs there. Miriam decides this is the perfect time to resurrect her artist path, and possibly dally with a local bookseller who has always been in love with Leni. Larry in turn decides to build the most amazing swimming pool he can, wanting to surprise Miriam with it on her eventual return. At the same time a potential dalliance with the young bethrothed niece of Herve is enticing. Nadia drowns her sorrows with vodka, Gervaise continues milking cows, agonising over her directionless son, her husband takes matters into his own hands, and steady lovely Klaus refuses to leave.
Not a lot happens really, but the writing is mesmerizing in the ordinariness of these lives, the day to day goings-on, the shall I/shan't I decisions they make. It only felt dated because there are no cell phones, no internet, no social media. None of that stuff. Just letters, the phone, telegrams. But aside from the physical differences, this tale, its characters, the conundrums they face, the unfolding of it all is as perfect for now as it was 35 years ago. Just perfect. This has to be a sign of good writing, that it continues to hold relevance.
September 6, 2012
This is the best novel I've read in a long time. Interesting details of small-town, pastoral life with complications of love and the intrusions of urban life and distance. I can't wait to pick up another novel by this prolific writer, whose excellent story "My Wife is a White Russian" I read in a recent story collectionl.
February 13, 2014
This was slightly disappointing. Even after finishing it I was not quite Sir what it was supposed to be about, France, swimming pools, love, art? There was a hint of a good story but it never quite made it.
December 21, 2010
Beautiful!
January 28, 2012
I particularly loved the French characters in this book. I like to believe they exist.
March 14, 2022
I seem to be on a bit of a Rose Tremain binge at the moment! And enjoying it immensely, I might add.
The Swimming Pool Season seems to attract more than its share of criticism here, but I admired it a lot. I'll grant that it will not appeal to shallow-minded people who want the hero to battle against insuperable odds, kill the villain, seduce the beauty and live happily ever after. No one lives happily ever after in this book. They mostly have lives of what Thoreau called “quiet desperation”, betrayed variously by their own weaknesses, their loyalty to others, their shyness, their unrealistic ambitions or their peasant obstinacy. No one is bad, for very few real people are. No one is really unpleasant, because in real life, we tend not to be. There is quite a lot of just plugging on with things, because that is what we do in the real world.
It's a bit like a college writing exercise, actually. “Take several random characters and weave them into a novel: you must include a failed swimming-pool salesman, a minor artist, a Polish ex-pat, a French peasant, a genial German, a drunken French peasant ...” If it really was a writing exercise, Tremain would get an A-plus, because all those characters and more make a convincing and enthralling story which I found hard to put down.
However the real strength of the book does not lie in what happens, but in the way it is described. The dialogue is unstrained and natural, and the mangled English of Nadia the Polish lady is a delight. As usual in Tremain's work, settings, clothing, food and drink are vividly portrayed. And she has that rare and wonderful gift of the fortunate expression – the artful and artless combination of words that paints a picture. A simple example … feckless Xavier thinks about going to his departed lover's house and confronting her family: “... they in the warm house, polished and oiled and tended, he with the night at his back, out in the cold”. Xavier has nothing to offer, no skills, no language, no job, no family to speak of … he has the night at his back. If I'd tried to write that in one of my own novels, it would have taken me a whole paragraph to say what Tremain manages in eleven words.
The Swimming Pool Season seems to attract more than its share of criticism here, but I admired it a lot. I'll grant that it will not appeal to shallow-minded people who want the hero to battle against insuperable odds, kill the villain, seduce the beauty and live happily ever after. No one lives happily ever after in this book. They mostly have lives of what Thoreau called “quiet desperation”, betrayed variously by their own weaknesses, their loyalty to others, their shyness, their unrealistic ambitions or their peasant obstinacy. No one is bad, for very few real people are. No one is really unpleasant, because in real life, we tend not to be. There is quite a lot of just plugging on with things, because that is what we do in the real world.
It's a bit like a college writing exercise, actually. “Take several random characters and weave them into a novel: you must include a failed swimming-pool salesman, a minor artist, a Polish ex-pat, a French peasant, a genial German, a drunken French peasant ...” If it really was a writing exercise, Tremain would get an A-plus, because all those characters and more make a convincing and enthralling story which I found hard to put down.
However the real strength of the book does not lie in what happens, but in the way it is described. The dialogue is unstrained and natural, and the mangled English of Nadia the Polish lady is a delight. As usual in Tremain's work, settings, clothing, food and drink are vividly portrayed. And she has that rare and wonderful gift of the fortunate expression – the artful and artless combination of words that paints a picture. A simple example … feckless Xavier thinks about going to his departed lover's house and confronting her family: “... they in the warm house, polished and oiled and tended, he with the night at his back, out in the cold”. Xavier has nothing to offer, no skills, no language, no job, no family to speak of … he has the night at his back. If I'd tried to write that in one of my own novels, it would have taken me a whole paragraph to say what Tremain manages in eleven words.
May 14, 2017
As always, Rose Tremain's characters have a way of sneaking up on you as you read. The gentle meandering through intersecting lives overshadows the slow moving story because, really, it's ofetn not the story that makes Tremain's writing addictive, but the depth and complexity of her characters. THE SWIMMING POOL SEASON is filled with very human characters - Larry & Miriam, Gervaise & Klaus, Nadia, Xavier and many more, are the story -their strengths, their fears, their hopes and their losses, their (at times hopeless) search for love, were what kept me reading.
However, the book (written in 1985) did have a "dated" feel to it and at times the darker hopelessness of ordinary lives made the book far too melancholy. The ending, too, was a bit unsatisfactory. An enjoyable read overall, but doesn't match the brilliance of The Colour or Music & Silence
However, the book (written in 1985) did have a "dated" feel to it and at times the darker hopelessness of ordinary lives made the book far too melancholy. The ending, too, was a bit unsatisfactory. An enjoyable read overall, but doesn't match the brilliance of The Colour or Music & Silence
October 6, 2018
If you need an uplifting story, this is not it. I would almost say it was mainly depressing, but the author writes so well, I just enjoyed every page. Whether a major or minor character, the people who inhabit this book are so well drawn. Their relationships with each other in the tiny French village of Pomerac are never less than interesting. Tremain cleverly switches from one to another to keep a narrative flow.
There is little plot. Events unfold slowly but gather pace in the second half. Some of the dialogue is truly outstanding. don't be fooled by the description of "a love story" on the back cover. Much of the love in the book is unrequited.
There is little plot. Events unfold slowly but gather pace in the second half. Some of the dialogue is truly outstanding. don't be fooled by the description of "a love story" on the back cover. Much of the love in the book is unrequited.
September 16, 2018
Sometimes I feel compelled to point out that I rate books strictly on my own enjoyment of them. Objectively this should get 4 or 5 stars but based on my taste, and maybe even external circumstances, I give it three.
This was a bit of a slog. The characters were complex and multi-faceted so I never had a person I was rooting for or identified with. The writing was very good and the story believable.
This was a bit of a slog. The characters were complex and multi-faceted so I never had a person I was rooting for or identified with. The writing was very good and the story believable.
November 24, 2025
The first part of this book was as slow as Victoria Road in peak hour. I was about to put it down when I noticed one reviewer had suggested that all of Rose Tremain's novels improve as they go on---and so it turned out to be. The second half was quite lively in comparison with more relationships and betrayals---more life. A good read.
7.5/10
7.5/10
January 10, 2019
The Swimming Pool Season
It missed top rating because it did not grab my attention at first.I left reading it for several days and when I returned to it Didn't want to put it down. It made me think the affect love can have and how devastating it can be.
It missed top rating because it did not grab my attention at first.I left reading it for several days and when I returned to it Didn't want to put it down. It made me think the affect love can have and how devastating it can be.
June 13, 2020
Really disappointed with this book. Didn't care for the characters or the language. :(
Thank goodness I've read other, better novels by Rose Tremain. If this had been my first I wouldn't have bothered with her others.
Thank goodness I've read other, better novels by Rose Tremain. If this had been my first I wouldn't have bothered with her others.
July 21, 2021
I enjoyed reading this book but like some of Rose Tremain's other novels I have read I feel she has trouble ending them. I would like a bit more resolve of what happened to the characters. But perhaps that is her point about life itself?
September 5, 2021
I liked the characters although I thought some were superfluous. A touching love story runs through this with Klaus and Gervaise . A lesson about expectations and failure I hope we hear about the life of Gary in another book
September 15, 2023
An English couple set up home in a small French village before Miriam is called home to her mother's deathbed in Oxford. The lives of the people and the communities in both the French village and Oxford frame the stories of several key characters. Very enjoyable book.
July 5, 2025
Although I was interrupted twice whilst trying to finish this book, and even though I found it a bit hard to get into…. I did end up really appreciating Rose Tremain’s interpretation of love. And I just loved Nadia.
May 15, 2020
How does she do it? Totally believable, complex characters with whom you laugh and love and worry. My 5th Tremain and still many more to discover.
June 9, 2020
OK, a bit dull. Her more recent books are better.
April 3, 2022
4.5 a blissful return to Rose Tremain's writing
April 10, 2022
I couldn't get to grips with this at all and found it heavy and oppressive.
August 5, 2024
This is one of Rose Tremain's earlier novels, but enjoyable none the less. Set mostly in Southern France (and to a lesser extent, Oxford) it paints a picture of rural life in a small, sleepy hamlet. Quite melancholic, with a varied cast of characters, it was a rather sombre read, but I found that okay.
January 15, 2023
An absorbing read for those who enjoy novels. about psychological interactions and relationships.
April 6, 2017
Rose Tremain is one of my favorite authors, so whenever I find a book of hers I've never read I feel like Fortune has smiled on me. I always find her writing to be literary and wonderfully developed, and The Swimming Pool Season was no exception.
One of my favorite things about her writing is her character development, and this book's characters are sure to make you look forward to your next encounter with each one of them. Each one's distinctive humanity is so engaging that you easily forgive them their numerous flaws (most of them, anyway.) The settings in the book were charming, the story intriguing, and the multinational context added a depth that helped propel the story along.
One of Tremain's great gifts as a writer is her ability to quietly assign significance to ordinary things. In this book, the colors of objects (doors, handkerchiefs, candles, skin, etc. ) reflect back to the elements that are central to the story (e.g., air, earth or water). Probably her most notable effort at this was in The Colour, in my opinion her best work ever.
Like every one of her books, The Swimming Pool Season is completely different than anything else Tremain has written. Its plot is complex, but easy to follow. The story is of love, betrayal, and the redemption of each character, each in his or her own way.
The Swimming Pool Season is set in England and in France, and the title refers to one character's wish to redeem himself and his past failures by starting a swimming pool business in rural France. It sounds ridiculous, but by the end you completely understand the importance and controversy the idea generates for each of the characters. Initially, it sounded to me like a weak idea for a book, but but ultimately it was another masterful accomplishment by this great author.
One of my favorite things about her writing is her character development, and this book's characters are sure to make you look forward to your next encounter with each one of them. Each one's distinctive humanity is so engaging that you easily forgive them their numerous flaws (most of them, anyway.) The settings in the book were charming, the story intriguing, and the multinational context added a depth that helped propel the story along.
One of Tremain's great gifts as a writer is her ability to quietly assign significance to ordinary things. In this book, the colors of objects (doors, handkerchiefs, candles, skin, etc. ) reflect back to the elements that are central to the story (e.g., air, earth or water). Probably her most notable effort at this was in The Colour, in my opinion her best work ever.
Like every one of her books, The Swimming Pool Season is completely different than anything else Tremain has written. Its plot is complex, but easy to follow. The story is of love, betrayal, and the redemption of each character, each in his or her own way.
The Swimming Pool Season is set in England and in France, and the title refers to one character's wish to redeem himself and his past failures by starting a swimming pool business in rural France. It sounds ridiculous, but by the end you completely understand the importance and controversy the idea generates for each of the characters. Initially, it sounded to me like a weak idea for a book, but but ultimately it was another masterful accomplishment by this great author.
August 18, 2014
The Swimming Pool Season is one of Tremain's early novels but despite that it definitely has the style that I have come to recognise after reading several other of her books. It's difficult to imagine anyone who has a love of reading the written word not being entranced by Tremain's eloquent prose. What carries The Swimming Pool Season is the characters, which is a good job as there isn't much of a plot. However, there is a story, that of a diverse group of people living in rural France, all with their own unique identity. Tremain is brilliant at characters, and with her exquisite writing style her books are always worth ready regardless of the plot (if, indeed there is one). Particularly worthy of mention is Nadia, whose unintentionally hilarious rendition of the English language provides many of the lighter moments in a novel that is often tinged with sadness. Not Rose Tremain's best, but as always a pleasure.
November 4, 2012
Poetic, literary and stuffed with French people, this read like Joanne Harris with A’levels. The title’s swimming pools are built by the (nominally) central characters Larry and Miriam, whose building firm went bust and who are now living in rural France. They are only the nominal central characters as the omniscient narrator casts its eye wide, taking in such peripherals as Miriam’s mother’s late husband’s ex scholar’s girlfriend. So many characters, many of them romantically involved with more than one other character, and yet only an average length book. Each has a relatively small opportunity to shine, and as such the depth of detail invested in each character is impressive, but I found the book overall to be dry and (aside from Nadia’s wobbly grammar) lacking in humour. Aside from urging Larry to tell his wife to s*d off I felt little sympathy or connection with any of them. Well written but ultimately a bit dull.
November 5, 2013
As a reader, I found the extremely intense prose, the immense detail and the large cast of characters frustrating. It nearly put me off reading it. But as a writer, I loved the prose - some of Tremain's descriptions of people and settings set an example to any of us who aspire to improve our game. There are so many points of view, sometimes in adjoining paragraphs with no line breaks; there are so many unhappy people interacting with each other often for no apparent reasons; but there are also many pages of superbly phrased writing and astute character descriptions that I should aspire to emulate.
November 29, 2009
An Englishman with a failed swimming pool business moves with his wife to rural France. When his wife returns to England to care for her ailing mother, he becomes more entwined with the people in the little village, and decides to build a swimming pool. A lovely though perhaps cliched depiction of French rural life.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews