Stacy Sims

Swimming Naked

First published in the USA by Viking Penguin 2004 March 30, ISBN 0-67003-290-5. Viking paperback published in the USA 2004, Plume paperback published in the USA 2005 February 22 ISBN 0-45228-560-7.

According to the dustjacket of Swimming Naked, Stacy Sims "left a varied career in advertising, public relations and graphic design to finish Swimming Naked. She currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she owns a Pilates studio." In my opinion, Sims was right to give up the day job, as she has made a very good job of her first novel.

In Swimming Naked, two strands of a story work forwards together, gradually intertwining and finally fusing. Both are narrated in first person by Lucy Greene. Alternate chapters tell of her childhood, then move towards and through adulthood. Interleaved with this, and covering just a couple of months, Lucy describes having to take a break from work as curator of photography in an Arts Museum to look after her mother, dying of cancer in Florida. Lucy, her sister Anna and their parents start out as a fairly unexceptional family group, but circumstances and developments gradually distort and damage individuals and inter-relationships. Although some of the events are unlikely, they never seem unbelievable - after all, they happen all the time to a very few people, why not to Sims' characters?

One of these less-than-commonplace episodes occurs at the start of a summer holiday. Lucy's mother drags the young girl away from the chore of unloading the car on arrival at their lakeside holiday home, and, on reaching the lake shore, announces that they are going skinny-dipping. Lucy is initially shocked, but goes along with the idea, and ends up having a truly magical experience, as you can read in the extract. This special memory sustains Lucy throughout her life, and provides Sims with both a title and a cipher for the mother-daughter relationship.

Sims is an admirer of photographer Diane Arbus, who, in my opinion, treated nudists less than sympathetically. In contrast, Sims writes about social nudity - albeit the very limited in-the-family social nudity of exceptional skinny dipping - without implying any of Arbus's freak-show overtones. Also unlike Arbus, Sims is often cheerful and sometimes funny. Although only a small part of the book deals with swimming naked, I am happy to recommend this thoughtful and positive story, and to keep it out of the "unfulfilled promise" area.

An edited version of this review appeared in the 2006 March issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2005 November 2.
 
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