Swimmers

by Amy Bright

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-513-4

216 pp.

Ages 12+

July, 2014

Amy Bright burst onto the youngCanLit scene with Before We Go (Red Deer Press, 2012), a novel that did not shy away from tough issues like cancer, death and grief, and she felt no compunction to bring it all to a happy conclusion.  As such, I expected another emotionally-engaging story in Swimmers, and I was not disappointed.

Hunter Ryan is returning home to Victoria after spending the past 3 months in Lethbridge, living with his Aunt Lynne and being home-schooled with a twelve-year-old girl, Poppy, by her mother.  When his friend Lee arrives delivering news about Hunter's friend Niall, they board a Greyhound bus to return home, surprisingly bringing Poppy along with them, without her mother's permission.

The events and discussions on the journey home in December are juxtaposed with Hunter's recollections of events primarily from the previous two school years when he'd become close friends with Niall Black, a guy with a lot of issues and always on some drug or another.

"He didn't like the way things were when they weren't blurred around the edges, stretched out and slow." (pg. 17)

And, though a lot of other teens found Niall to be dangerously enigmatic, never knowing what might set him off, Hunter saw something different in Niall.

"The big Niall thing, the one that kept him golden even when everyone started turning on him, was that he was like no one else." (pg. 15)

But, about a year before the trio travel from Alberta to BC, something happens that will change everything for both Niall and Hunter. Much later, Hunter recognizes that,

"You take that step forward and lose the way back" (pg. 91)

Not the same teen who left three months earlier, Hunter proves that sometimes a step forward is just that, hopefully bringing clarity where there was none.  Amy Bright brings Hunter and Poppy through the confusion of misunderstandings about others' actions and their own roles in those choices, burdening themselves with more than just guilt. What's worse is when others attribute that same blame, such as in Hunter's situation.  While Hunter attempts to make sense of his confusion, through interactions with a school counsellor, friends, and family, Poppy suffers in silence, just ruminating about it, wrapping it up in a tight bundle of resentment.

How we see others' flaws and accept responsibility for their choices is a basic theme of Swimmers, a novel in which young people are just trying to keep their heads above water, even attempting to save those who cannot.  Not surprisingly, there are those who should take some responsibility for others' actions, including Hunter's family, Niall's family and Lee, but Hunter and Poppy are not two who should accept it.  They have not only accepted it, they have chosen to carry that burden themselves, never realizing how that load could have been  lessened sooner.  Drowning in it did not have to be an option.

Before We Go

 

by Amy Bright

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-471-7

222 pp.

Ages 12+

2012

Before We Go anywhere, we usually make preparations, whether we're going on vacation, to school, to work, to face a challenge or to our deaths. Some preparations are judicious (e.g., making a will, packing a suitcase) while others may be frivolous (e.g., getting a pedicure).  Many are logistical such as booking airplane tickets or purchasing a backpack.  The emotional, heartfelt preparations are perhaps the most difficult to effect Before We Go.

While her elderly grandmother lays dying at Victoria General Hospital, Emily Henderson, 17, does not want to leave her side.  But, when visiting hours end on that New Year's Eve, Emily is especially reluctant to go home to the house she has shared with her grandparents since she was a baby, anticipating the loneliness of having no one:  she has no father, her grandfather is dead, her grandmother dying, and her mother seemingly too busy with her life in Vancouver as a journalist.  It's not surprising that Emily, uncharacteristically for her, accepts an offer from Alex, a young man she meets in the hospital elevator, to join him and his teen sister, Lucy, for the evening.

The three young people become fast friends, driving around and eating junk food, going to a carnival, popping into Emily's house, and finally going to a party.  While they ignore texts and calls from Lucy and Alex's parents and from Emily's mother,  they talk and share.  Emily talks about her mother and her grandparents and being alone, and Alex and Lucy, amazingly close for siblings, chat about their taxidermist father, their mom, and their own relationship.  The revelation that Alex has cancer explains his presence at the hospital and his parents' desperation for his return there but he has a plan that he has devised with Lucy's help and Alex is determined to deliver on it, regardless...

Any book that has dying and death as its fulcrum could become a tough read but Amy Bright keeps the grief at bay with her believable teen characters whose hope, without exuberance, buoys them.  Emily, Alex and Lucy are all looking ahead and finding their fears and responding to those fears, even if frequently questioning their responses.  Emily worries about life without any family.  Alex worries about Lucy after he's gone.  Lucy worries about Alex and what little time he has left.  The plot could seem as contrived as Alex's plan, but Amy Bright brings the three characters together in such a natural way that every event seems to take place fortuitously (not coincidentally), appropriate for the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.  

Though I had expected a cliché ending (perhaps finding a genetic match for bone marrow transplant), I was relieved by its absence, though also disappointed.  The disappointment was not in Amy Bright's writing or Before We Go's plot: it was a personal need for a happy ending with all loose ends tied in appropriate bows (even if not the colourful, flashy decoration on gifts).  Still, reminded of Robert Burns' poetic assertion that,

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

From To a Mouse on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough (Robert Burns, 1785)

Alex's plan does not end in nothing but grief and pain.   Joy may not be the outcome but with acceptance (as suggested in the hospital's proffered literature on grief) comes comfort and sometimes that's the best that can be expected.