The Night Swimmer

Still waters run deep in Bondurant’s atmospheric third novel, fluidly narrated by Elly, a six-foot, freckled, flaming redhead. Ominous extracts from the journals of John Cheever at the head of each chapter help set the tone. Soon after 9/11, Elly and her husband, Fred, move from Vermont to Ireland after winning the Nightjar, a village pub on the coast near Cork, in a contest. Elly, a world-class swimmer, looks forward to swimming off a nearby windy island. But Fred and Elly are far from accepted in the village, in which centuries of friendships and rivalries rule. Elly eventually discovers the body of an eccentric villager she knows floating in the sea. Was it a suicide? Bondurant (The Wettest County in the World) excels at depicting his wild setting (“On Cape Clear you are always leaning into the wind”), but is less sure in drawing his two main characters, who, passionately in love at the start, suddenly become quarrelsome. The couple’s mental and emotional unraveling may be as incomprehensible to the reader as the murky doings of the locals. (Jan.)