historical fiction
Florence Adler Swims Forever is about a family affected by tragedies. The Adlers live in Atlantic City in 1934. Their older daughter, Fanny, is living at a birthing hospital for the later stages of her high-risk pregnancy. They have Fanny’s daughter staying with them until the baby arrives. They are also sponsoring and housing a young woman who has escaped Nazi Germany and is trying to get her parents to the United States as well. And then tragedy strikes.
The novel is told from multiple characters’ viewpoints to
keep things interesting and to keep the new discoveries coming. It was well
written. It wasn’t fast-paced but was
never boring. It detailed people’s real lives—the ups and the downs, the good
and the bad.
Rachel Beanland based this fictional story on her own
family’s real history, which she described at the end of the novel. I thought
she did a great job expanding her family’s truths into a full novel. I wanted to find out how things would turn out for the characters.
Several of the family members’ actions in this novel were
controversial. Choices were made to save
Fanny from further trauma but I was not convinced they were the right
choices. One choice was to hide the
death of someone so that Fanny’s pregnancy would not be jeopardized by the
devastating news. Later, another choice
was made by Fanny’s father which, I felt, was truly overstepping. However, the buy-in by other people served
as counterpoint my thoughts. There is room here for great discussion around
these tactics.
I was kind of disappointed with Beanland for letting herself
off the hook by not including Fanny’s reactions to these controversial choices. Her parents never faced the
music in the novel and I felt that weakened the ending. I suppose the reader is
to assume that these choices were eventually accepted.
The audiobook was narrated by 7 different voice actors: Jonathan Davis, Tim Paige, Carly Robins, Jonathan Todd Ross, Tara Sands, Jesse Vilinsky, and Gabra Zackman. Some were better than others but, overall, they did a fine job. I'll give the ensemble cast an A-.
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