Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories
Schneck’s writing is sinewy, tough, sharp ... In some sense, this memoir is for people who are the tiniest bit tired of memoir. It gives one the feeling of greater understanding, a sudden, expansive view from the top of a hill. Even though Schneck works at a scale that is deliberately small, insistently concrete, and extremely lean, her writing somehow exposes whole vistas of the female experience.
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Swimming in Paris reads like the act of stripping down for a swim; it involves baring herself, but oddly, the story stops there. We don’t follow her for long into the water, that open space that allures and frightens her ... More time spent in the pool, the uncomfortable place where Schneck learned to dispel her illusions, quiet her anxieties, and write with stunning directness, might’ve made these stories more faithful homages.
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Schneck’s matter-of-fact delivery of all aspects of her lived experiences... lends a universal quality to the narrative; these observations made by one woman are broadly recognizable ... Schneck carries that frank discussion forward with grace and hard-won knowledge.
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