I decided to read Matt Bondurant’s novel The Night Swimmer for its intriguing premise. This is a story of a married American couple who win a pub in Ireland. Who wouldn’t want to win a pub? I asked myself. The idea creates visions of a fantasy life, but I’m sure publicans can tell me that it’s damn hard work and long hours. And then we haven’t even started talking about the customers….
So I started The Night Swimmer with the idea that I was about to read a story of a couple who were running away from their lives of responsibility with romantic illusions of what life owning a pub would be like. I was right about that part, but the novel went far beyond disillusionment and marital problems. Here’s now the novel opens:
It began with a dart, a pint, and a poem, three elements that seemed to demonstrate the imprecise nature of fate. When Fred stepped up to the line, the dart held loosely in his hand, you could see in the way he carried his body the assurances of a man who was well prepared. Fred was always lucky, but to say that now seems to remove something essential from him. In fact it is Fred who should be telling you this story, as he was the one preparing for this all along. Not me.
The dart match is just one stage in the ‘winning-the-pub-contest,’ and I’ll admit that while I wanted to read about what happened, I thought the idea of winning a pub was a bit fantastic. I googled ‘win a pub’ and discovered in less than 5 seconds,that it is, after all, entirely possible to win your very own pub courtesy of a Guinness contest.
After winning the contest (and the pub), there’s no looking back for Fred and Elly as they pack up their belongings and set out full of hope and excitement:
It was a common enough dream for young Americans of a certain set; by moving into a mostly imagined past, represented by Europe, we could recapture something we so desperately wanted in the present. Or simply a way out of the meat grinder of the suburbs. We named our place in Burlington Revolutionary Road, a joke that no one got as far as we could tell. It was Fred’s idea. Fred always wanted to admit our hypocrisy and failings. He could have been a champion medieval monk, so adept he was at self-flagellation. I guess Fred felt if we got it out in the open, acknowledged our defeat, then it wouldn’t turn out so badly for us.
The reference to the Richard Yates novel, Revolutionary Road had my attention–not that I’ve read the book, but I got the reference, and I understood that this pub meant ‘freedom’ and the sort of life both Fred and Elly dreamed about, but there are other hints dropped about Fred’s life in corporate America. Also, very early in the novel, Elly’s love for swimming is apparent–as is Fred’s tendency to drink too much. Alarm bells on that one; after all you can’t run a pub with a drinking problem unless you plan on consuming all the profits….
Anyway, Fred and Elly take possession of their pub, The Nightjar, which is in Baltimore, a tiny village located in western County Cork on the very south-western tip of Ireland. Baltimore is the main ferry port to a handful of islands that lie just off the coast. There are three pubs in Baltimore, and Fred and Elly are told that most of the business will take place over the tourist season.
Just on the surface of the story, it’s easy to see the sorts of problems this American couple will face: boredom is a threat, of course, along with financial instability. A marginal business that relies on tourists can be a gloomy prospect, and then right after Fred and Elly arrive, Elly starts taking off for Cape Clear Island where she spends about half of her time.
Fred and Elly, seen as “blow-ins,” are not welcome. That’s bad enough but they land in the middle of a feud involving most of the locals. As Fred and Elly’s relationship unravels, life becomes more dangerous, and although the novel builds gradually, it’s a slow-burn full of menace and with undercurrents of the supernatural.
The novel includes some marvellous passages which describe swimming, and these sections convinced me that author Matt Bondurant had to be a swimmer:
I dove in and swam to the middle of the bay, then porpoised down, equalizing pressure once, twice, three times, to the bottom and held on to a piece of jutting rock. At the open end of the bowl, a deep black slot, the darkness of the open ocean. A few small forms flitted about, coming into the light and disapperaing. The smash and bubble subsided in my ears and was replaced with the deep thrum and crackle, and I looked up to the surface, allowing myself to slowly rise, pulled up by the chest, the air in my lungs, my head back and arms trailing like a puppet with cut strings.
Obviously the author painstakingly researched the region in order to recreate the details here. While the landscape was convincingly atmospheric, I had the most difficult time with the characters of Fred and Elly–which is a little odd as the tale is narrated by Elly. Their relationship is difficult to decipher, and the two main characters somehow remain opaque, strangely distant and ultimately diminished by the story’s emphasis on the forces of nature.
Review copy courtesy of netgalley. Read on the kindle.
I’d love to read this. And Revolutionary Road as well, btw.
I thought I had heard it was possible to win a pub – and as you say, it is. Somehow tempting but one of those ideas that tested will prove far less romantic. Too bad about the characters, they don’t sound rounded. Still, I’ll put it on a list.
Interesting, and yes, clearly a swimmer.
It sounds a bleak proposition. My wife’s parents had a pub and it seems to have been bloody hard work, as you’d expect. Here you still have that hard work, if you’re lucky, but only in Summer and otherwise a futile opening of doors that hardly anybody will walk through.
How well do the supernatural elements work? Are they necessary? Do they add to the story do you think?
Sorry to disillusion…but most rural Irisah pubs are empty/colesed these days.
Oops..typo…that should read ‘closed’
…and that should read ‘Irish’ ! Not my day. Maybe I should go to pub.
That’s too bad, Conan. When the characters in the book arrive at the pub, they find no less than THREE on the small row of shops.
The one in this story sounds only barely open.
Caroline: I think you’d enjoy it. I may be the only one who feels this way about the characters, and it may be that the author fully intended to make setting and nature overwhelm character.
Max: These resort places seem to change hands frequently and are testament to the shipwrecks of many dreams.
I think the supernatural elements work well and they fit with the setting etc. I didn’t expect that side of the novel to be honest. I thought I was going to read about a marriage meltdown and constant bickering. On the contrary, there’s not that much about the marriage at all.
Naturally the supernatural elements change the story into something else entirely, so perhaps I went into it with the wrong expectations.
Adding: The films of Powell and Pressburger (The Archers) often showed how setting impacted the psychology of its characters, so this film would have made good raw material for one of their films.
The supernatural is done in such a way that you’re never quite sure…..
I’ll admit the premise intrigues me as well and the reference to Yates adds to the attraction (it should be noted for those who have not read Revolutionary Road that the promise of “freedom” in escaping to Europe is not only not realized it becomes another version of imprisonment).
Can you tell me anything more about the author? The name doesn’t sound Irish and given all authors who are Irish, the prospect of setting a novel there must be daunting (if you get what I’m trying to say).
He’s written a number of books including The Wettest County in the World–a historical novel about bootlegging and based on the lives of relatives. I read an interview (can’t find it now), but it sounds as though he throughly immersed himself in the area in Ireland. He’s from Virginia.
Bondurant…it’s an unusual name, one he shares with a mafia enforcer in the later novels of James Ellroy (!). conankennedy is right, the Irish pub – especially its rural version – is not in rude health at present. I think about 1 a day has closed in the last couple of years.
Sounds like you weren’t totally sold, Guy? Or just that it was a different book from what you’d expected?
The blurb I read gave hints about the book being more than just the couple’s displacement and adjustment. I had the hardest time with the two main characters. The wife takes off half the time and spends a week at a time on one of the islands leaving the husband to run the pub. Now I know business is slow, but even so, that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Well it would have if she disliked him or something along those lines. The husband even offers food at the pub and I don’t see how one person could do it all–let alone without bitching about it. True the pub begins to take on a neglected look, but even so, I just didn’t buy that she’d split right away. Then I also felt as though I never got inside their heads. There’s an explanation later on about why they wanted to leave America, and while I bought that, the characters were opaque. I didn’t know them and normally I feel as though I know characters as I know people–they are real.
“Who wouldn’t want to win a pub? I asked myself.” Me!! The idea of spending my days among the smell of beer makes my stomach churn.
It’s a good idea for a novel, though. It reminds me the one about this couple who buys a pension on an island.
I think it’s a great idea for a novel. It certainly attracted me.
Given the rate at which Irish pubs are closing, it would seem that “winning” a pub would be an expensive mixed blessing. Reminds me of the old joke about the Western Canadian grain farmer who won the lottery. Asked what he intended to do with his windfall he said “I think I’ll just keep farming until the money runs out.”
It sounds *exactly* like my kind of book. Thanks for the heads up.
It sounds an intriguing read, Guy. The problem you raise at the end … it sounds as though the characters (their relationship in particular) aren’t well established at the outset and if you don’t do that in a novel like this, I guess you are a bit lost. Still the set-up and the writing have intrigued me.