“A satisfying exploration of two sisters’ relationship, cleverly put together and written in a way that draws the reader along.”
Swimming at Night
A Novel
Description
A young woman travels around the globe in search of answers about her sister’s mysterious death in this “tender and intricate meditation on sisterhood and family…an accomplished debut” (Lisa Unger, author of Beautiful Lies).
People go traveling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or they are running from something.
Katie’s world is shattered by the news that her headstrong and bohemian younger sister, Mia, has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Bali. The authorities say that Mia jumped—that her death was a suicide.
Although they’d hardly spoken to each other since Mia suddenly left on an around-the-world trip six months earlier, Katie refuses to accept that her sister would have taken her own life. Distraught that they never made peace, Katie leaves behind her orderly, sheltered life in London and embarks on a journey to discover the truth. With only the entries of Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and—page by page, country by country—begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.
“A great read for fans of smart contemporary women’s fiction as well as thriller and mystery readers” (Library Journal, starred review), this desination thriller weaves together exotic settings, suspenseful plot twists, and familial bonds in a powerful tale of family secrets, grief and loss, and forgiveness.
Reviews
“In the same vein as Rosamund Lupton’s Sister, Clarke takes the reader on an exciting and mysterious trail. . . . [She] does a nice job of creating characters who make us care about them and situations that are exciting and believable. A great read for fans of smart contemporary women’s fiction as well as thriller and mystery readers.”
"Alternating chapters juxtaposing the two sisters’ lives engage readers from the start in Clarke’s accomplished debut."
“A tender and intricate meditation on sisterhood and family, Swimming at Night is an accomplished debut. With a deft hand, Lucy Clarke weaves a deep and compelling story that is as much about what binds us together as it is about what tears us apart. Perfectly capturing the impossibly complicated love of siblings, this is a rich and moving story that lingers long after the book is closed.”