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Castlebar Book Club

The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting. (Previous Book Club selections)

The Swimmer by Roma Tearne

Cover image of The Swimmer written by Roma Tearne

A gripping, captivating novel about love, loss and what home really means.
Forty-three year old Ria is used to being alone. As a child, her life changed forever with the death of her beloved father and since then, she has struggled to find love.That is, until she discovers the swimmer.
Ben is a young illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka who has arrived in Norfolk via Moscow. Awaiting a decision from the Home Office on his asylum application, he is discovered by Ria as he takes a daily swim in the river close to her house. He is twenty years her junior and theirs is an unconventional but deeply moving romance, defying both boundaries and cultures – and the xenophobic residents of Orford. That is, until tragedy occurs.

About the author
Roma Tearne fled Sri Lanka at the age of ten, travelling to Britain where she has spent most of her life. She gained her Master’s degree at the Ruskin Shool of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, and was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She was recently awarded a fellowship in the visual arts by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain. She lives and works in Oxford.
Amazon.co.uk

Brixton Beach, Tearne's previous novel, concerned a migrant's journey from war-torn Sri Lanka to oppressive England and was an engaging but flawed read. This follows a similar journey but adds a real focus and poise to its musings on place and nature. Poet Ria lives in self-imposed isolation on the Suffolk coast, unable to have children and estranged from the tiresome, rightwing brother who is her only real family. She barely notices the news reports of break-ins and mutilated animals that begin to swirl around her quiet village, but is shaken from her melancholy when she spots a young man swimming with graceful strength in the river at her garden's edge. He is a Sri Lankan doctor named Ben seeking asylum, and soon she has adopted his cause and he is playing aching jazz on her neglected piano. When shots ring out, Tearne follows the repercussions, exploring the worlds of a mother and a daughter, tracing lines of grief and regret and conjuring wonderful moments of stillness amid the subtle shades and delicate birdsong of the English coast.
The Guardian

Love and loss are explored through the voices of three very different women – a lover, a mother and a daughter. Tearne captures a shifting social and political landscape and questions notions of home and homeland. She eloquently persuades her readers to side with the disenfranchised, and to understand the predicament of refugees.
The Independent

Told from the perspectives of three women, this tender story of love and loss is deftly infused with the sights and sounds of a hot Suffolk summer.
The Daily Mail

Dedicated to book clubs, ReadersPlace.co.uk (Random House) is a website where reading groups can find inspiration, have their say on books, and connect with other book clubs and authors. Reader's Review site with active discussion board

  • CompletelyNovel.com links readers as well as new writers, offering a one-stop author-reader experience.
  • Book Group Links: A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
  • Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
  • Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
  • Reading Group Guides: A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
  • Writer's Resource site for writers of all abilities

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