This is the first book I read from the Shakespeare and Company Year of Reading 2021, a random bundle of twelve books that I receive throughout the year. This is a love story but also a story about racism and what you face every day when you are dark-skinned. Two young well-educated Black British people meet in a pub. Slowly, slowly, they allow this love to come into their lives, but this reveals also scars, fears of opening up to the other, especially for him, swimming in open water with his past and present as a black person, seen only as a black body. There is frailty in this book and I felt emotionally touched on every page, every sentence, close to tears all along, exposed and fragile. It’s beautiful.
“You know that love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love ?”