She swims into the medals and then into oblivion - a sensuous, searing, compact debut from an outstanding new British writer.
"A skewed fairy tale, a hymn to water... Broady's descriptions of swimming are supple, fluid and memorable."
THE TIMES
"'You don't need to fly... that's what your imagination's for!" says the girl's father on finding his five-year-old daughter sprawled among the zinnias after leaping from the bathroom window, but she has acquired the taste for it, splashing and flying in the water at Worthing... The price she pays for her constant communion with the water, her ability to soar and fly beyond the dreams of ordinary mortals, is the competition circuit. Childhood and puberty are spent powering up and down pools, fighting pain, exhaustion and the water's changing moods. Echoing the aspirations of its heroine, Broady's stunning narrative seems to hover in its own distinctive element and, at times, to soar and fly. In prose of poetic precision and poignancy, he touches on the deepest dreams of the human heart."
CHRISTINA PATTERSON, 'Observer'
Broady's terse, lyrical tragedy is a devastating, highly focused study of talent and the slave trade in talent. The originality of its subject matter, its remarkable poetic cohesion, and Broady's lack of piousness, passionately argue broad social and moral criticisms which resonate well beyond the specifically English terrain explored... A beautifully unified first novel."
BILL BROUN, 'TLS'
"This slim but sensuously written first novel explores the psyche of a female athlete of extraordinary grace whose career is cruelly brief, overtaken by still more ruthlessly driven teenagers. Broady's book describes the life of a person so used by others she hardly knows how to experience her own self. Poignant and lyrical."
ESQUIRE
"The most interesting first novel this year - a dark and shiny account of the butterfly stroke, competitive sports and madness."
EMILY PERKINS, 'Guardian'
