The Swimming Pool

by Holly LeCraw

Book Overview

Seven summers ago, Marcella Atkinson fell in love with Cecil McClatchey, a married father of two. But on the same night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil's wife was found murdered--and their lives... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307474445
• ISBN13: 9780307474445
• Release Date: April 2011
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Read

I very much enjoyed this book and was able to really get in the head of the characters. I loved the fact that it took place in areas that I am familiar with - from Wellesley to the Cape to Atlanta. The author should be so proud for having this as her debut book. She allows for you to create your own images of the characters - you don't get caught up in mundane descriptions or too much obvious detail. You get to use your imagination. I would not classify this book as a beach read (although aren't all books good to read on the beach?!) or a murder mystery. It is the story of a family and their relationships - getting through various struggles in their own ways. It is an easy read though heavy topics and emotions. I would highly recommend this book!

really good

I really enjoyed this book. It got even better as I got into the book and the writing was terrific. It covered adultery, murder, crazy sisters and cougars so it just about had it all. Very enjoyable summer read.

Great Read!

I think The swimming Pool is a wonderful book. A great first for Holly LeCraw. On the surface the plot keeps you turning the pages...eager to see how a scene develops and resolves itself. And yet there is something much deeper than the type on the pages....it is a story of family....of relationships...of parents and children....of life and its experiences, loss of a parent and birth of a child. You will be missing out on a wonderful new book if you do not buy this. It left me thinking about my own life and my relationships and eager to read another book by Holly LeCraw.

beautiful writing, great characters

Readers who appreciate elegant prose and complex characters will find so much to like in this book. Holly LeCraw does a masterful job of getting at the elusive, profound truths that hide under everyday conversations between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives. This is much more than a book in which Things Happen, although plenty of things happen. It's a meditation on the intersection of love and fallibility - that place where we all end up at least once in our lives, whether we meant to go there or not.

Rippling effects of family secrets

I've seen early reviews of this book that call it many things to many people: beach reading. Airplane reading. Neither of them are true, at least not in the cliched sense. This book rises above easy categorization. "Beach reading" carries certain connotations -- chiefly, an active plot and lightweight prose -- which is only true here as regards the plot, because the writing is lyrical and complex. The story is an active read, vivid and engrossing. The plot, without giving anything away, centers on an affair, a murder that has taken place in the past, and a second affair (this time, edgily, with the SON of the man with whom the woman had the first affair). But it's not your typical May-December romance, and it is the rippling repercussions of the family secrets that give the story depth and nuance, and made it interesting to me. Here's why: The subtlety of the writer's perceptions, and expression of each character's grief and needs, provide the depth that kept me rooted and reading. The family relationships -- parents to their children, siblings to one another and to the memories of their deceased parents -- are rich. The resolution of the mystery at the end is important, but for me wasn't the most important thing: It was seeing the conflicted emotions and baggage of each character, which sidesteps easy judgments of people making poor decisions.