Learning to Swim is a 1999 novel by Claire Chambers. I was surprised to learn that it won the Parker Romantic Novel of the Year Award. It didn’t really come over as a romance to me, more a very good coming of age story.

Young Abigail Onions lives a conventional life in suburban South London, doing quite well at school, practising her cello, having a few problems making friends. She meets Frances, and is introduced to her bohemian family. Frances’ brother Rad is a presence in the background, then the foreground. They all go through school together, enjoying some happy times, enduring a number of disasters, water often common to both. Just as school years come to an end, events split the group, before a reunion between Abigail and Rad about a decade later.

Despite the title of the book, Abigail never learns to swim, but without giving anything away, she does eventually learn that if you fall in the water, it’s best not to struggle and thrash about. Drifting and floating will make it easier for someone to come to your aid.

In general terms this water survival philosophy is expressed as:

“Over the years I’d discovered that the key to contentment is low expectations.”

Learning not to struggle will help Abigail survive, and ironically might also allow her to achieve her most heartfelt desires. Low expectations aren’t the same as not trying. Grown up music teacher Abigail tells a reluctant cello student that a musician is the product not of great breakthroughs, but of hours of mundane practice over many years. The thing is to practice everyday, like doing the housework. Do that for long enough and you’ll be a musician.

I took the same approach to writing this review. Just write another one. Don’t try too hard. Float through it.

This book is a great read, funny, moving, and in its own self-effacing way, wise.