Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Women's Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Character Types - Fiction

Swimming with Jonah

Name: Swimming with Jonah
Author: Audrey Schulman
ISBN: 9780380800865

by Audrey Schulman

Write a review

Overview

On a sweltering August morning, Jane Guy steps from an island plane into a strange and dangerous world. The awkward, insecure child of a world-renowned physician and a beautiful Bostonian ballerina, she has come to attend Queen's Medical School on a tiny Indonesian island. For an exorbitant enrollment fee, Queen's is willing to accept any American child of privilege who has been rejected by all normal medical schools. Not bound by American law, the school specializes in motivating problem students - no matter what the cost to each student. For Jane, given the transgressions of her past, Queen's is her last chance. Surrounded by jungle and sea, Jane is plunged into unrelenting heat and the psychological abuse of the teaching staff. The truest connection she makes on the island is with another student, Keefer. Together they spend their few spare minutes watching as Jonah - a shark that Keefer keeps captive in an ocean pen - slowly circles his cage. As days extend into weeks, Jane feels herself changing, retreating deeper into a body and spirit she no longer recognizes. And as an aura of desperation deepens among her peers, Jane's determination to succeed grows. Because failure is the only way off the island, and for Jane, it is not an option.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Baltimore Sun

Powerful...harrowing...flawlessly structured and thematically complex...An exhilarating and moving story...fraught with unexpected tensions and physicaldanger. —The Boston Book ReviewExtraordinary...well-wrought...an intriguing work of fiction...startling in its surreal intensity and exquisitely written.

Boston Globe

Feverishly imagined

Laura Green

...[T]his is no fairy tale....Schulman expertly conveys a whole palette of terrors....[She] has written a creepy page-turner you want to finish in the hope that everything will somehow be O.K.
— The New York Times Book Review

New York Times Book Review

A creepy page-turner...Schulman expertly conveys a whole palette of terrors.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A forlorn but richly compelling character is the protagonist of this beautifully controlled second novel. Jane Guy is the anxious, diffident, overweight daughter of a prominent physician and a famously beautiful ballerina who live in the wealthy community of Greenwich, Conn. Her parents' cold, silent disapproval of her mediocre academic achievements deepens as she is rejected from every medical school she applied to. Her shame and depression persist even as they celebrate her "acceptance" at a medical school on a remote Indonesian island that takes in any student whose parents can afford the outrageous tuition. When Jane leaves conventional suburbia, she enters another world both physically and mentally; the professors at the rigorous and autocratic school behave like drill sergeants, berating the students mercilessly and expelling them at any hint of mischief or incompetence. In the charged and lonely realms of the anatomy lab, the classroom, and the school's one student bar, Jane tries to survive among an uneasy new circle of friends: sultry, smart-mouthed Marlene; calm and competent Michael; Trent, as irresistible as he is blithely cruel; and stuttering, sensitive Keefer, who keeps a shark named Jonah in an ocean pen. Schulman's assured pacing and the subtle portrayal of Jane's alienation, innocence and growing awareness of her needs bring hypnotic tension to the story. The pressured environment and the heat of the island combine in exotic ways to change Jane's consciousness. As she discovers her powerful sexuality, an unusual kinship with her classmates and her new capacity for self-determination, the narrative moves to a stunning conclusion. Schulman's spare prose drives this suspenseful and moving novel with the enigmatic precision of poetry, fulfilling the promise she demonstrated in her debut, The Cage.

Laura Green

Kirkus Reviews

A tropical version of The Paper Chase, describing a young woman's first year at an Indonesian medical school, by the author of The Cage. Jane Guy's father is a man of substance. A Vietnam vet who learned first-hand what happens to the human body under extreme stress, he completed medical school after returning to the States and specialized in anesthesiology, eventually patenting several devices whose royalties made him rich. "Jane had always assumed she was going into medicine, that she would try to be like her Dad"- but there are problems. To begin with, her grades aren't up to standard. Plus, she was caught cheating at college and expelled. As a result, none of the medical schools she applies to will accept her-except for Queen's Medical School, halfway across the globe on an Indonesian island. Queen's is one of those offshore places that specializes in picking up US med-school rejects and getting them into the AMA by the side door. Jane is no Vietnam War hero, but she's brave (and driven) enough to put up with almost anything for her degree, so it's off to Indonesia. Her arrival isn't exactly propitious-she trips on the tarmac and dislocates her shoulder-and the school isn't quite what she expected, either: Teachers have nicknames like "Burn-out," half the buildings are Quonset huts, and the student lounge is a bar on the beach. Meanwhile, Jane's roommate Marlene was also expelled from college (for stealing the Dean's car), and one of her classmates keeps a pet shark. But, in the best Foreign Legion style, all pull together and look out for one another-until tragedy strikes when Jane's best friend turns despondent over his inability to make the grade. By story'send, though, Jane has learned far more about herself than about anatomy, making the year more than worth her efforts. Formulaic, but written brightly, and charmingly sincere.