City Swimmers & Other Stories by Anna David

Anna David

City Swimmers & Other Stories

In these ten stories, Steve Clark guides us through an urban terrain of relationships--marital and filial, romantic and bitter--exploring loss and longing in a timeless but modern cityscape. A man leaves his wife in bed with the flu and takes a walk through his past, encountering the dead and living, the real and surreal, on his last day alive in Paris. A couple, who've married each other three times, break up at an iconic New York piano bar. A wife casually confesses to a nonchalant husband that she's kissed a young hockey player at a Thanksgiving party. A girl in high tops becomes oddly entangled with an aspiring artist who works as a bouncer.... Sometimes brash, sometimes poetic, usually humorous, these stories provoke thought, provide experience, and aim to delight.

Reviews

In this aptly titled collection of stories, journalist Clark explores human lives navigating urban landscapes and urban problems: a sense of isolation, the mad rush, the lack of time to pursue real passions, and the strain urban living puts on romantic and parent-child relationships. Not knowing that he is going to die a few hours later, a man on holiday with his family takes a stroll through Paris, his wife’s beloved city, visiting spots remembered from previous visits and encountering people both living and dead. In other entries, an unexpected inheritance gives a woman the soul-satisfying luxury of revenge, and a brother calls his sister to apologize—yet his apology only reveals his true state of mind and their past.

Clark’s prose is elegant, serene, boasting a reporter’s eye and a storyteller’s élan, never drawing attention to itself but always serving the needs of the story: “It made her glow,” he writes, from the perspective of the husband in Paris: “The midnight dinners in tiny bistros, the warm croissants in the morning, oysters at midday, the long, long walks, making love in the afternoon …” Most of the characters and situations are entirely believable and relatable, and many remain in the reader’s mind, such as that husband, who faces the end alone in the most mundane of ways, or a father who comforts his son after he has a panic attack.

Clark makes small, everyday moments poetic. The parents of a teen couple in “Pizza Thanksgiving,” watching anxiously as their son skates with his love/crush, are sketched with an empathetic eye and loving attention to the textures of everyday life, especially their anxiety at her rejection of him. The understated way in which the influence of wealth and class shapes politics and, through it, the lives of ordinary people is a key theme, explored with power in “The Reunion.” This deserves special mention. An interesting collection, drawn from life, alive with insight and grace.

Takeaway: Engaging stories revealing contemporary urban life with insight and humanity.

Comparable Titles: Thomas Morris’s Open Up, Yiyun Li’s Wednesday’s Child.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Find out the latest indie author news. For FREE.

Password Reset