Not everybody can be saved
When Faisal emerges from the English Channel after his record-breaking swim from France, Brian and Eileen Pratchett expect gratitude – after all, they rescued him from the refugee pool, fed him, trained him, transformed him. But Cameron, a young Scottish drifter, has come searching for his brother Malcolm, one of the Pratchetts’ earlier ‘projects’. Malcolm was going to be a tennis champion. Instead, he disappeared.
As Cameron’s questions grow more pointed and Faisal’s gratitude turns ambiguous, the Pratchetts’ carefully maintained façade begins to crack. Behind their respectable seafront home with its immaculate rose garden lies a darker story – one of control, obsession and the terrible price of failing to meet expectations.
Swimming for England is a masterful psychological portrait that operates simultaneously as thriller, social satire and searing indictment. Goodman’s prose is both beautiful and brutal, his imagery visceral, his characters rendered with uncomfortable intimacy. This is fiction that disturbs, provokes and lingers – perfect for book clubs seeking compact, challenging material and readers who appreciate the intersection of literary ambition and page-turning suspense.
