Nightswimmer - Hardcover

Olshan, Joseph

3.92

687 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671885804 ISBN 13: 9780671885809

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1994

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When Will Kaplan meets Sean Paris, he is gripped by what he recognizes as desire and by what he senses is a shared affliction of the heart - the unshakeable memory of lost love.
For it has been ten years since the love of Will's life disappeared during a night swim in the Pacific, off the Santa Barbara coast, and Will still doesn't know if Chad was swallowed up in the wake of a passing barge or took that moment of confusion as an opportunity to abandon Will at sea.
Now, on the edge of another ocean three thousand miles away, on the day of the Fire Island Morning Party, Will and Sean begin to wrestle with their ghosts and to weave themselves into a new embrace of intimacy. They plunge through the shadows of AIDS, the networks of mutual, ill-wishing friends, and the structures of gay life in New York City, both forward into their all-consuming affair, to the place where the real dangers lie, and back to the safer shallows of their past. What Will learns about Sean - and discovers about himself - carries him through the tides of love and obsession, loss and discovery.
In Nightswimmer, Joseph Olshan has crafted a lyrical and complex work of fiction, bringing his widely acclaimed narrative talent to a story that is at once masterful and mature, intensely passionate and deeply affecting.

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About the Author:

A professor of creative writing at New York University, Joseph Olshan is the author of four novels, including Clara's Heart, which won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers' Competition.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Olshan (The Waterline, 1989, etc.) has written a beautiful and flawed novel about two gay men learning to trust again. One night, when Will Kaplan was living in Southern California, he and his lover went out for an ocean swim, something they had done numerous times together, but this time his lover vanished. Now, ten years later and living in Manhattan, Will still doesn't know if he drowned or ran off, scared of the ever-increasing intensity of their relationship. Since the disappearance, Will has been in a series of failed relationships, each marred by the fact that Will hasn't been able to completely commit to anyone else or let anyone else close to him. But then he meets the equally damaged Sean Paris, and together they dance around intimacy. Set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic, as well as against the shallow, hedonistic scene of Fire Island and the gay discos, their relationship unfolds in front of several jealous ex-lovers and lovers of their exes, all of whom seem intent on disrupting Will and Sean's chances for happiness. Olshan's writing is consistently excellent, his long, careful observations about obsession, loss, and rejection are often transcendent. Yet the book sometimes bogs down in the mechanics of the strained plot, especially in the mystery of Sean's former lover. Also one wonders why the book is written from the point of view of Will having a one-way conversation with Sean (e.g., ``Then you jumped off your chair...''). One keeps waiting for a payoff from this odd and obtrusive device, but it never happens, and it doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than as an experiment. Destined to be compared with James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, this is a passionate and deeply felt book. But like Baldwin, Olshan deems it necessary to surround a powerful love story with an awkward and distracting plot. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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