The Swimmer

Roma Tearne (Harper Press, £14.99)

A captivating and unconventional story of love and war, The Swimmer subverts expectation and shuns sentimentality through the author’s refusal to offer easy answers or trite consolation.

The Swimmer is Ben — a 25-year-old Tamil doctor who has fled Sri Lanka and arrived in Suffolk as an illegal immigrant. He is watched by Ria, a lonely woman 18 years his senior, as he bathes in the river at the bottom of her garden and sneaks into her house to play the piano or steal bread.

Their idiosyncratic romance is exquisitely underpinned by the complexities of their respective situations and by the harsh events that made them who they are.

Tearne offers us an intriguing and lyrical view of their passion, interleaved with the realities of “what might have been”. Her meticulously restrained prose illuminates the awkwardness of their getting together and floods the page with an unexpected tenderness.

The book’s central event and underlying themes are seen through three strong female perspectives. We share their innermost thoughts, insecurities and self-acknowledged failures.

The powerful narrative simultaneously encompasses important issues for our times and submerges us in a gripping tale of family and home, loss and desire, set against the elegantly evoked beauty of the Suffolk coast and the political tumult of Sri Lanka.

Through these women we receive vivid characterisations of the men in their lives and a stark vision of the consequences of prejudice, division and collective fear.

Tearne’s debut novel, Mosquito, was shortlisted for the Costa Award in 2008. She fled Sri Lanka for Britain at the age of ten and now lives in Oxford with her husband and family.

She will talk about her novel tonight with Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening, at Blackwell’s, 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford.