Stephanie Johnson

Swimmers' Rope
ISBN: 9781869790257
Imprint: Random House NZ Vintage
Release: 07 November 2008

Friends since childhood, Norman and Lyn grow up as next-door neighbours in Herne Bay at the turn of the twentieth century. When Lyn is sent to manage a central North Island timber mill at the tender age of fourteen, Norman goes to visit him. There he is forced to confront a mysterious adult truth. Later, in their twenties, the two men commit an act so appalling that it ruptures their friendship for many years. In 1972 the elderly Norman meets a young woman in a pub. Burdened by the memory he must at long

last assuage, he presses Bronwyn into becoming his unwilling confessor. Swimmers' Rope is a powerful novel about friendship, guilt and sex and our changing notions of loyalty and culpability.

Reviews of Swimmers' Rope

Johnson's writing is skilful, insightful, witty and she has a truly light touch.
(Margie Thomson, The New Zealand Herald)

Immensely satisfying, utterly believable, Music From A Distant Room is Stephanie Johnson in top form. She has written the year to date's best New Zealand novel.
(Warwick Roger, North and South)

Johnson is a master puppeteer. She holds the strings of this tight mysery closely together as she explores the nature of friendship and loyalty, tainted as they are by guilt. Like the swimmers tied to a rope, both are indissolubly bound together.
(Steve Walker, Sunday Star Times)

Johnson keeps a firm grip on the complex structure of the novel, and its gradual revelation of plot is carefully paced to sustain suspense and momentum. The writing is confident, speaking in the voices of very different characters of very different historical moments. It is also very evocative of place, both of the city of Auckland and its surrounds, and of the untamed New Zealand bush and windswept coast.
(Louise O'Brien, New Zealand Listener)

Click here to visit Beattie's Book Blog, with a transcript of Peter Wells's launch night speech.

Or, click here for Carole Beu's review on National Radio's Nine to Noon programme, broadcast on the 18th of November 2008.