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Summary
Summary
I slipped off my clothes and dove into the pool. We are 96 percent liquid. There is nothing more sensuous than a good splash against naked skin: the initial rush of cold, the smooth acquiescence of inner fluid to the outer mantle of wet.
Thirty-two-year-old Audrey Hastings swims a mile each day in her backyard pool: sixty-six laps. These meticulously counted crossings are the balm for her frustrations as a new mother, and her hedge against the insecurity she feels upon discovering her first gray hair. But the smooth waters through which she so assiduously glides grow cloudy when it becomes crystal clear that her good-looking, easy-going husband has begun an affair with a comely co-worker named Kim--who resembles Audrey, ten years younger.
Audrey rages and stews and swims while contemplating this threat to her very existence. A fan-tasy of revenge--taking a younger lover of her own--becomes real when Audrey catches the eye of a sexy grad student at the park where she takes her two-year-old, Gina, to play.
Audrey hesitates, resists, succumbs. And Au-drey learns that the consequences of jealousy, suspicion, and adultery can be more disastrous than she ever imagined.
Precise, intelligent, and intense, 66 Laps is an altogether irresistible novel written with scalpel-like precision.
Author Notes
Leslie Lehr Spirson is the winner of the 1998 Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal for Best Novella. She wrote the film Heartless as well as several humorous parenting books; 66 Laps is her first novel. A graduate of the U.S.C. School of Cinema/ TV, she lives in Southern California with her husband and daughters.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Audrey Hastings is a stay-at-home mom who swims a mile--66 laps--every day. For the heroine of screenwriter Spirson's fast-paced first novel, swimming is both refuge and release from the anxiety she feels when her husband, Jim, an art director of TV commercials, takes on a new assistant, Kim. A younger, more attractive version of 32-year-old Audrey, Kim stops by the house frequently, and one day she happens to leave her sunglasses by the pool; soon enough, Audrey suspects an extramarital affair. Further troubled by new gray hairs and a body she is sure is aging too quickly, Audrey finds herself sorely tempted by a young grad student she meets while at the beach with her toddler, Gina. To get back at her husband, and after a too-quick moral stocktaking, Spirson's Everywoman begins an affair of her own. For a while, Audrey feels younger, revitalized, but soon her grad student turns obsessive--and, worse, Audrey discovers she is pregnant. Jim realizes the baby isn't his, and the story line shifts from comedy to tragedy, with Gina cast in the role of innocent victim. If this sounds like a made-for-TV movie, that might not be an accident. Like all screen-ready novels, this one comes equipped with witty dialogue, a lean plot and a few terrific one-liners ("Some women marry the answer to their dreams: I married the antidote to my nightmares"), though some of the prose falls flat ("I looked heavenward for respite"). This novel, picked by John Dufresne for a 1998 Pirate's Alley William Faulkner Award, perfectly mirrors its southern California setting. Though slickly composed and smoothly engaging, on closer inspection, it lacks real substance. Agent, Deborah Grosvenor. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A sweet contemporary love story with an old-fashioned message, told by a young mother whose fears about getting old have tragic consequences. Audrey Hastings, 32, lives in California, in the Valley. Husband Jim is a freelance set designer and builder, and while Jim works on movies and commercials, Audrey, a former champion swimmer, takes care of toddler Gina and tries to swim 66 laps'a mile'daily in their small pool. She's happy staying home with her daughter or spending time with other moms at the park, talking about their children, or strolling around the mall with Gina. She's happy, too, with Jim and, because her parents were bitterly divorced, is determined to remain married ('the only D word around here is death').But then she discovers some gray hairs and panics. Looking in the mirror, she realizes she'll never be young again. And this insight, related in the easy, conversational, self-deprecating tone that makes Spirson's tale so engaging and effective, becomes the worm in the rose. Now obsessed with her physical decline, Audrey relates how she suspects Jim of having an affair with his young assistant, Kim, and in revenge allows herself to be seduced by Sean, a handsome young grad student in the park selling ice cream from a truck. She unflinchingly details her guilt and the sad results of her behavior: she finds herself pregnant, and Jim learns about Sean. Audrey, however, is a survivor with a loving heart, and so is Jim. Will they both be able to move beyond her betrayal? Or manage to outlive a far worse tragedy yet to come? Some schematic plotting, but Audrey speaks so compellingly from the heart that it can be forgiven.
Booklist Review
Audrey Hastings is a 32-year-old woman living comfortably in a suburb of Los Angeles with a loving husband and an adorable daughter. Nonetheless, dismayed by the fact that she isn't as young as she used to be, she convinces herself that her husband, Jim, is having an affair with his young assistant, Kim. Consumed by jealousy and rage, Audrey contemplates having a fling of her own, a thought that edges closer to reality when she meets a handsome, amorous grad student/ice cream truck driver named Sean. Sean pursues Audrey, and, in a moment of weakness combined with lust, she gives in. Her fling leaves her feeling vindicated and ready for a new start with her husband, until she discovers that Jim never actually had an affair. Her guilt intensifies when she realizes she is pregnant. Somewhat predictable, but still fast paced, the novel plows toward a shocking and horrific ending in the last 15 pages. An enjoyable, quick read. --Kristine Huntley