The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams

This is a re-read, for maybe the third time. For the next little while I am going to be doing re-reads, instead of books new to me. After all, what is the purpose of keeping books if they are never read again? Not that I keep all the books I read, but I do keep all those which I feel merit a second look.


This author, Richard Adams, is best known for his book Watership Down, a rather whimsical book written from the point of view of rabbits. It was a best seller in the '70s. This was followed by Shardik (about a bear) and The Plague Dogs. This book breaks that pattern, as it is entirely different in tone and concerns very human happenings and passions. It is not well known, and may even be out-of-print now, but for me it has long been a very special read.

The narrator is a (perhaps) typical English member of the middle class: classically-educated, moral and upright, diligent and hard-working, reserved and understated, emotionally and sexually repressed. Then he meets Kathe, and falls immediately and irredeemably under her spell. To him, she is a beautiful, mysterious pagan goddess who has deigned to love him. He lives as if in an enchantment as she marries him and introduces him to a sensual and erotic world of which he has never even dreamed.

But into their marital paradise, where all riches and rewards seem to be possible, creeps a troubling fear, a result of the psychic talents of the narrator (perhaps), or of the guilt felt by Kathe (perhaps), or of actual supernatural manifestations (perhaps). Unfolding as in a Greek tragedy, inevitable retribution follows, because paradise cannot last.

This novel reminds me of Wuthering Heights in its tone and depictions of a love that transcends death and time, of The Magus by John Fowles in its blurring of real and mythical, and of the Biblical quote in "Song of Solomon": "Her love was stronger than death...."

I really, really like this book. This time through, the hints and foreshadowing seemed a little obvious, but I was completely surprised at the ending the first time I read it. A couple of people I recommended this to back in the '80s came away saying, "What?" So I don't suppose that everyone would like this, but I do.