The First Rule of Swimming

by Courtney Angela Brkic

Overview

A woman must leave her island home to search for her missing sister -- and confront the haunted history of her family.

Magdalena does not panic when she learns that her younger sister has disappeared. A free-spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves the isolated Croatian island where their family has always lived and sets off to New York to find her sister. Her search begins to unspool the dark history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war.

A haunting and sure-footed debut by an award-winning writer, The First Rule of Swimming explores the legacy of betrayal and loss in a place where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, and where individuals are forced to make wrenching choices as they are swept up in the tides of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316217378
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	05/28/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	337
Sales rank:	555,609
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Courtney Angela Brkic is the author of Stillness: And Other Stories -- named a 2003 Best Book by the Chicago Tribune, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick. Her memoir The Stone Fields was shortlisted for the Freedom of Expression Award by the Index on Censorship. Brkic has been the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University and lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

The bonds of kinship and homeland confine but endure in this debut novel from short story author and memoirist Brkic (The Stone Fields, 2004, etc.). Magdalena is so attached to Rosmarina, the remote Croatian island that is her family's ancestral home, that she could not leave it even for her true love, Damir, a journalist who now roams the globe without her. She was so traumatized by the dreadful year she and her younger sister Jadranka spent on the mainland with their mother, Ana, and her brutal second husband that she is content to remain a spinster schoolteacher and tend her aging grandparents. But the disappearance of Jadranka, a gifted artist who had gone to visit a cousin in New York City, prompts her sister to begin an odyssey that uncovers some ugly secrets about their family and the agonized history of the former Yugoslavia. Brkic's well-crafted narrative intersperses Magdalena's quest with the memories of both sisters, as well as those of their dying grandfather, a partisan during World War II, and of Ana and her brother Marin, who fled to America with the cousin's family during the oppressive heyday of Yugoslavia's communist regime. We learn fairly soon that Magdalena's father may have committed suicide after learning of Ana's infidelity with a feared local policeman, but it will take the rest of the novel for a tangled web of loyalty and betrayals to unravel enough to reveal the complex motivations behind these acts and many others. The final chapters feature several moving reconciliations affirming the power of love and forgiveness to overcome long-festering traumas, but the closing pages quietly remind us that such reunions can't necessarily heal every wound or change a person's destiny. A few unnecessarily melodramatic plot twists only slightly mar a sensitive tale of deep emotional force.

Kirkus Reviews

"Lives are bruised and twisted by history in Brkic's empathetic and graceful novel about a dislocated Croatian family."
—Brooke Allen, New York Times Book Review

"Courtney Brkic gracefully interweaves three generations of family stories and lies...all with authority and wisdom...An intimate portrayal of life in exile."
—Amy Shearn, O, the Oprah Magazine

"In her exquisitely crafted, superbly structured novel, Brkic summons undertones of Greek tragedy to create her arresting characters and their intense emotions and dire secrets. By dramatizing nuanced questions of who is at fault, who can be trusted, and who will sink or swim, Brkic reveals persistent, multigenerational wounds of war, sacrifice, exile, and longing and imagines how healing might commence."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist [starred review]

"A sensitive tale of deep emotional force."
—Kirkus Reviews

"This compact, beautiful novel of two island sisters deftly explores what it is to love a place, a person, and the lengths to which one will go to defend them. Brkic is adept at depicting both the timeless paradise of the island, Rosmarina, and the way its brutal history has scarred a family for generations."—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander

"Courtney Angela Brkic seamlessly negotiates past and present, silence and secrets, to reveal one family's enduring love-as profound and as perilous as the sea surrounding their island home. With beautiful images and characters that are vividly real, The First Rule of Swimming is a delicately written work of art, about history and memories and the grief at their fading and loss."—Daphne Kalotay, author of Russian Winter and Sight Reading

"Between the dazzling light of an Adriatic island and the gritty streets of New York City, an intriguing world of possibilities - past, present and future - arises. Part-mystery and part-family saga, The First Rule of Swimming explores the variety of ways in which the physical and psychological landscape of a place can be altered forever by politics and immigration."—Valerie Martin, author of The Confessions of Edward Day and Property

"Think of your most cherished memory. Now think of your saddest memory. What if the two were so connected to each other that one couldn't exist without the other? You'd have to find a way to forge forward, containing the pain and beauty, both. And you'd find a way. Because you must. And Courtney Angela Brkic's tender and tough novel The First Rule of Swimming could be your guide. In which case, you'd be in the best of hands."—Joshua Furst, author of The Sabotage Café and Short People

"Brkic is a shimmering talent. She writes with precision and power about three generations of a family caught in a cycle of war, sacrifice, love, and loyalty. Brkic's portrayal of the family's brutal, mysterious transformation is held in perfect tension, and tenderly told in language that is as fluid and crystal-clear as the island seascape around which the story revolves. The thing that perhaps stays most with me about this book is its heart: vulnerable, resilient, generous."—Mei Ng, author of Eating Chinese Food Naked

From the Publisher