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Title details for The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson - Available

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

by Joshilyn Jackson
Joshilyn Jackson
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Laurel Gray Hawthorne hasn’t seen a ghost in the thirteen years she and her husband have lived in their beautiful gated community. Then, in the dog days of a Florida August, she wakes to find Molly, her daughter’s best friend, standing by her bed, who then leads her to her own small body floating lifelessly in the Hawthornes’ pool. Laurel’s carefully constructed existence cracks, and the past seeps through.
 
Laurel and her sister, Thalia, grew up in what looked like a typical blue-collar home. But the Grays have long been hiding a skeleton in their closet. While Laurel built her “perfect” life, Thalia became an actress with a capital A, a woman who doesn’t fit in Laurel’s tidy world. Now Molly can’t rest until someone learns her secrets. Laurel turns to her sister, and together they begin a journey that will unearth their family’s history, the true state of Laurel’s marriage, and what really happened to the girl who stopped swimming.
 
“A vivid, smartly calibrated achievement . . . a ghost story, family psychodrama, and murder mystery all in one.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“A breakthrough novel . . . full of unexpected twists . . . beautifully balances between magical and realist fiction and [close] in tone and voice to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones or Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe trilogy.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 
“A great tale . . . builds to an exciting and violent ending, one that surprises.”—USA Today

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 18, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415946589
      • File size: 270046 KB
      • Duration: 09:22:35

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 29, 2007
      Jackson matches effortless Southern storytelling with a keen eye for character and heart-stopping circumstances. Laurel, a high-end quilt maker, sees the ghost of a little girl in her bedroom one night. When it leads her to the backyard and a dead girl in the swimming pool, the life Laurel had hoped to build in her gated Florida neighborhood with her video-game designer husband, David, and their tween daughter, Shelby, starts to fall apart. Though the police clear the drowning as accidental, it soon appears that Shelby and her friend Bet may have been involved. Bet, who lives in DeLop, Laurel’s impoverished hometown, was staying over the night of the drowning and plays an increasingly important role as the truth behind the drowning comes to light. Meanwhile, Laurel’s sister, Thalia, whose unconventional ways are anathema to Laurel’s staid existence, comes to stay with the family and helps sort things out. Subplots abound: Laurel thinks David is having an affair, and Thalia reveals some ugly family secrets involving the death of their uncle. What makes this novel shine are its revelations about the dark side of Southern society and Thalia and Laurel’s finely honed relationship, which shows just how much thicker blood is than water.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Author and actress Joshilyn Jackson skillfully delivers the unique Alabama accents and unusual idioms of the characters in her novel. Model wife and mom Laurel copes with a neighbor's drowning in Laurel's swimming pool and with her own bizarre past, which has embarrassing links to relatives in a poverty-stricken Alabama town. It looks as if her own "tween" daughter, Shelby, and a young visitor from Laurel's hometown may have had something to do with the drowning. With the aid of her flighty sister, an actress, the truth about the drowning, the past, and the present comes to light. Jackson's effortless reading and delightful characterizations make these characters likable despite the fact that Laurel and company show remarkably little grief and horror following the drowning. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 26, 2008
      Laurel, the center of Jackson's emotionally taut third novel, has a seemingly picture-perfect life, but when her daughter's best friend accidentally drowns in their pool and appears to Laurel in spirit form, things unravel quickly. Jackson's honey-sweet tones heat up into panic and confusion as everything Laurel depends on falls away. While set in the languid deep South, the pace is rapid. Jackson's reading keeps things brisk without going too swiftly. Jackson's excellent reading allows characters' voices to reveal much about their histories and personalities: Laurel's gentle but determined manner, her outrageously funny sister's sarcasm, the thick drawl of an impoverished girl visiting from Alabama. A brief interview with Jackson at the end offers some insight into the book's genesis and development and into her writing habits. Simultaneous release with the Grand Central hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 29).

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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