The Girl in a Swing
by Richards Adams
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richards AdamsEdition: Hardcover
Published: 1982-10
ISBN: 0517391732
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of The Girl in a Swing
Book Review: A book about loss and time
Summary: 4 Stars
We all read for "escapism" -- to leave our lives for a while. But I've read a few books that are so powerfully written that I don't want to pick them up and re-read them because, when I do, they draw me into their own world too completely. Reading those books is demanding; they instill an overpowering sense of longing to experience the world within their pages or the passions of their characters.
The Girl in a Swing is one of those rare books which has the power to pull the reader into the author's vivid imagination in this way. But unlike most of the others, it's not a pleasant journey. Adams' novel contains some of the most perfectly wrought passages I've read in modern fiction, but their effect is manipulative. The book is certainly concerned with morality -- Christian and pagan -- but it is not uplifting. The central crime of the book (the murder of a child) is too heinous, and the punishment enacted on the protagonists is too horrible. The book is not escapist; instead, the reader wants to escape *from* the pall cast by this book and re-enter the real world, where evil deeds seem not so evil, and may go unpunished. (Adams did not write the book to be an allegory about abortion, but like that issue, thinking about this book left me troubled and, at the same time, horrified that I should feel conflicted about murder, an act which should be morally simple. One longs for the moral certainty that seems to exist at the fringes of the political spectrum.)
This is the only "literary fiction" Richard Adams has written; he is known mostly for children's books and fantasy. I wish Adams had written at least one adult novel with a happy ending. There are many good points about the book. The book's heroine, variously called Käthe or Karin (depending on the edition), is an amazing creation. She is an idealized male fantasy, and intended to be, but she is also a convincingly real person, as is intended. She is a Galatea, but flesh and blood, not marble. Her curse and her fate are contrived, but she is not. Her death feels like a real death -- when she dies, her world also dies, it becomes part of the past and is lost with her.
I wish Adams had created the character without the curse. I don't like re-reading this book -- meeting Käthe/Karin and then losing her. But from time to time, the book's perfect prose calls me back. Adams' acknowledges the book's inspiration in what he calls "German death-romanticism"; it would be a better book without it, but he didn't write that book. I guess the conclusion is to try to live your life with a little of the passion and Eros that are depicted within; but to avoid sin and darkness, and hope for a happy ending.
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