Remember the huge stack of books I got at the publishing convention? This was one of them, and I just finished it.
I wanted to like it, mostly because I wanted a reason to finish it. The "mystery" was only not predictable by a technicality, and the characters were flat and WASPy, and dare I say idealized versions of the author? That's a stretch, but honestly: has Holly LeCraw ever met a person? The Swimming Pool makes me think: no.
Everyone is beautiful, everyone has a perfect body, a tanned body, an unbelievable body, a flawless body (actual phrases used to describe characters as they lie sexily on a beach, their sun-kissed skin shimmering blah blah blah). Everyone is rich, but don't worry--they're not too snobby or entitled. Also, their cottage on Cape Cod doesn't have a television! So real! The happiest characters have a healthy awareness of how easy their lives are, but sometimes they're even suicidal, via pills (!!) and another might be an alcoholic (??). Was the teenaged daughter sort of flighty? Was the adult son a handsome lawyer with shit on his mind? Was the dad a philanderer? Was the wife really good at tennis? What do you think?
Basically: I wasn't buying it. McCraw did not write real people. These characters are maybe idealized versions of herself and people she knew growing up, and I know because I used to write stories like that. It was hard to care about them, much less see them as anything other than caricatures. The adverbs and cliches weren't helping, either!
But there was some suspense, and I always want to know how things will end up no matter how crappily it's presented. At the end of the day, I still read this on the bus and I still finished it in just a few days...it was kind of a page-turner. So I place The Swimming Pool on this spectrum:
The Room -----> my short stories, 2003-2006 ----> The Swimming Pool ---> Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ---> Gathering of the Juggalos infomercial
Yes, it is really like that. This book gets a C- !
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