Swimming with Tigers by Kathy Hopewell - a Review

 
I am going to start off with a straightforward statement about Swimming with Tigers, the debut novel by Kathy Hopewell. Read it.  If you enjoy the fictionalised literary history of the likes of Pat Barker and Hilary Mantel, then Kathy Hopewell is the next, best author to add to your reading list.  I’m not even sure that Swimming with Tigers can be classified as a historical novel, per se, as it begins in 1938.  Does setting a novel less than a century ago classify it as historical, necessarily?

Regardless, the novel opens in the Paris of January, 1938 (it ends in September 1940 so covers almost three years).  We are quickly introduced to the dual protagonists (whose novel it really is, I will deal with later).  At the forefront, there is the post-debutante, neo-artist Penelope, an English rose with more than a few greenfly. Then, there is Suzanne, a young woman with little balance (physically and emotionally), returning to Paris to confront her past. Their chance meeting initiates the narrative drive of the novel, the beginning of a long and layered awakening for both. As the story quickly unfolds, we learn that both are part of (or rather caught up in) the surrealist movement and the men who dominate and distort it.

Now, I have set myself an aim to exclude any spoilers from this review – which is going to prove challenging. However, there are plenty of jaw-dropping revelatory moments in the first hundred pages of this novel - about both the past and the present - that would make wonderful cliffhanger episode endings should (and it should) this novel ever be made into a TV series. We learn much through Penelope’s eyes during this part of the novel – and these oh f**k moments are very skilfully dropped into the story by Hopewell. Although these moments are usually event-driven they reveal as much if not more about the nature of the men in and out of the lives of the two women as they do our protagonists.  

One of the early highlights of this part of the story, for me, is the free indirect discourse Hopewell uses to develop Penelope’s character – the moments we see things through her thoughts as words rather than those of the narrator’s.  Hopewell’s dialogue sparkles; the first meeting of the two protagonists is a joy to read for this alone. Suzanne’s blunt, cryptic and often obfuscatory answers frustrate Penelope while intriguing the reader.  She’s a mystery and Penelope is determined to discover more.

While I have to admit I didn’t really like Penelope for... quite a while, her frustrated asides about Suzanne’s inability to straightforwardly and honestly explain her history, had me smilingly nodding in agreement.  As her character develops, through her experiences, I did begin to like her more but couldn’t quite dissipate the 1930s “entitled trust fund baby” smoke she emanates almost throughout the novel and which enables her to get by on a number of occasions.  However, her financial dependence on her father does mean she can make unselfish decisions at important moments; this is delicately counter-balanced by the male artists’ willingness to take advantage of Pubol’s (a Dali-esque figure in the novel) wealth, despite their disdain for and jealousy of his commercial success.   As a quick aside, is it accident or design that Pubol’s name so closely resembles the French for garbage can (pubelle)?

Penelope scintillates despite my initial misgivings; she is very much the heart of this novel. And if she is the heart, then Suzanne is its soul, bringing depth and resilience (however fragile) to the story.  As opposites attract, these two characters are drawn together like magnets even if their relationship is hardly “smooth sailing” all the way. Of the two, I have to say that it was to Suzanne I was most drawn.  That isn’t to say I rushed to the end of each “Penelope chapter” in order to get to the next one about Suzanne (once they are separated by both geography and events).  However, I did engage with her travails significantly more than I did with those of Penelope!  My sympathies always rested with her one hundred percent, while with Penelope they vacillated a little.  Yet the novel is owned by both equally.

Surrealism is an essential part of this story but if that might put you off, don’t allow it to.  The “casual” reader doesn’t have to have knowledge of the movement – it is introduced and so explained organically to the reader through the fictional characters and scenes therein. I was half expecting extensive passages of explanatory exposition around the movement but they are mercifully absent.

I think if the novel is about anything, it’s about the exclusion of women from some thing (in this case surrealism) based almost solely on their gender and how they go about getting themselves included.  Or, rather how they go about evolving themselves to the point where inclusion is irrelevant, unnecessary – unwanted even; they have moved on.  This movement of character within the novel is, I think, its greatest achievement:  its subtle, refined and beautifully poised development of the two female protagonists.

This leads me to the men! I guess I have to think of the time in which the novel is set but even for 1938 the fictional artists featured here seem somewhat retrograde.  Preoccupied with the unshackling of cultural chains that their artistic movement demands of them, they overlook to include both genders as equal in their experiment. Indeed, they actively subvert any progressive role that gender equality might have in surrealism, veering dangerously in their art towards a sexually-based fantasy version of women that serves to silence, shift or suppress the artistic female and deny women entry to this particular club.

Oh, and it’s an only boys allowed club in essence and in reality.  At first I found it difficult to distinguish between the more peripheral of the male artists that Hopewell introduces in quick succession. It occurred to me that perhaps it was deliberate on the part of the author, as they seem to form into a collectivised multi-limbed creature that excuses and revels in the “joint enterprise” of demeaning and degrading the female gender – without it ever occurring to them that this is exactly what they are doing.  This extends into their personal lives with both Penelope and Suzanne (who receive very different treatments, but are still made less than who they are by their respective men).  The phallocentric pursuit of artistic freedom we witness at the Paris Exhibition thoughtlessly places the other gender into objectified bondage (sometimes literally).  It’s redolent of some of the court cases that we still witness today where groups of men are collectively accused of crimes against women that as individuals they would be too scared or cautious or powerless to attempt.

Rolf, Penelope’s lover is initially something of a guiding father figure, even if Penelope doesn’t fully realise or acknowledge that she is substituting one pretty useless “daddy” for another.  There is a contrast, later in the novel, when Suzanne forms a close bond with Isaac, an elderly Dutch Jew which demonstrates that the desire to have a male parent figure in one’s life does not have to result in personal damage.  Penelope’s final realisation about why she stayed with Rolf for so long is a revelation to her but not really the reader.  Despite Rolf’s positive traits (he does have some!), he is unwilling to change – perhaps incapable of it. Even after his own tribulations, his first thought is to rejoin, regroup and revivify the boy’s club elsewhere.

As beautifully as the main characters are drawn, I have to take a little time to rejoice in the way that Hopewell depicts some of the minor characters. Following the sub-theme of creating one’s own family, I just loved the character of the kindly and wise Isaac, who takes in Suzanne when she arrives in Amsterdam.  Then there are Eduardo and Llucia, who virtually adopt Penelope during her Spanish sojourn but who know that her destiny lies elsewhere. This closeness is in contrast to the vicious and exclusionary matriarch Hopewell creates in Suzanne’s paternal grandmother as well as the never-seen but often mentioned father of Penelope who judges her and distances himself simultaneously.   And then, and then… there is lovely, dear, fated Freddie. How could you have done that to him, Hopewell?

The late introduction of James MacConnell is a deft deus ex machina – and not an obtrusive one, helping to more than satisfactorily tie up some questions about our protagonists’ future that readers might have.  Perhaps, perhaps… MacConnell could have been Jemima rather than James? Or would that be too trite?  Is character gender irrelevant by this point?

As gorgeously written as the novel is, with its evocations of a number of European cities (researching the 1930s geography of which must have been a labour in itself) and their populations, the wonderfully drawn characters and the inner lives of the protagonists, it is only “beaten” by its structure – which is flawless.   Swimming with Tigers pivots between Penelope and Suzanne, as you might already have gathered.   It shifts location on a number of occasions, allowing us the opportunity to learn more about them (the weather is very cleverly used, too).  Subplots and themes are interwoven, adding layers to the main story, with short chapters that help to maintain its pace. Yes, even what happens to Freddie makes perfect sense structurally, dammit.

Swimming with Tigers is a remarkable novel, simply put.  I enjoyed it immensely and was immediately drawn into the world that Penelope and Suzanne inhabit.  Their final exchange might have you reaching for the hankies. You have been warned.

You can buy Swimming with Tigers at:

Amazon

Blackwells