The Swimmers

Longlisted for the Ockham Fiction Award 2021, alongside Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. Previous winners of the award include Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries. A deeply personal account of grief: Chloe Lane’s mother-in-law had motor neurone disease and partly inspired the character of Erin’s mother. Though not autobiographical, The Swimmers benefits from Chloe Lane’s experience of grieving a person who is still alive, which brings depth to the novel’s portrayal of terminal illness. She is also a former competitive swimmer and art lover, like her protagonist. Antipodean Lit: Novels such as New Animal by Ella Baxter, Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down and Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss are putting the literary landscape of Australia and New Zealand on the map. Critically acclaimed in Lane’s native New Zealand: Called ‘intense; moving, and darkly comic’ by the New Zealand Herald, ‘a remarkable book’ by award-winning review site anzlitlovers.com and ‘strangely compelling… intensely moving’ by the Academy of New Zealand Literature. Bookanista ran a feature on Chloe Lane and The Swimmers, and Chloe Lane was a featured author on @twofondofbooks, an Instagram book club that has featured authors such as Douglas Stuart (Shuggie Bain) and Daisy Johnson (Everything Under) during publication week.