Vangie is dating Del in her senior year in high school, and they continue together after they graduate. They spend much of their time drinking, getting high, and screwing, although Vangie is smart and in some ways conscientious. Her parents are separated, and her community is poor. None of her friends is going to college — they all get draining, low-paying jobs. The most powerful emotional force in her life is sex with Del. They do it whenever they can. She lets Del do what he wants to her body, and it’s the proof of his feelings for her. He wasn’t her first — that happened when she became a teenager. But sex with him is powerful, not necessarily in a head-exploding athletic way, but instead with an intensity that puts the rest of her life into the background — it’s important to her. It’s not even that she is in love with Del; maybe she is, although she doesn’t dote on him. Vangie is enigmatic and confused. Sometimes she is tough, but more often she seems a little vacant.

Her best friend is June. The two friends spend evenings in high school double-dating, June with her boyfriend Ray. They drive out to a secluded locations, get high, and have sex, one couple in the front seat, the other in the back. It’s seedy but they find it exciting. After high school, June and Ray move in together, although it’s clear that June does not love him. Vangie then sees June rarely, and she misses her long talks with her friend.

Once this structure is place, the story proceeds at a steady pace, with each of the characters becoming increasingly desperate. Each of them is a little crazy and self-destructive. The character of the sex between Vangie and Del changes as more anger and frustration enters in to their relationship. Vangie becomes more obviously unhappy.

Maureen Gibbon makes Vangie the narrator, so her language is direct and often crude. It’s explicit, and some people may find it obscene. But it’s rare for writers to write well about what sex means to their characters, and Gibbon is eloquent. Of course, it’s an unhappy story, and it probably won’t speak directly to most readers’ experience. I doubt that the narrative even reflects the experience of many working class high school students. It’s about rural life somewhere in the USA, and there’s no mention of city life here. Gibbon lives in Minnesota, and graduated from Barnard College in New York City and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, so I’d guess her experience is rooted more in northern than southern life. But Swimming Sweet Arrow is not particularly regional, and it’s not rooted in a specific time frame, although a mention of preparing joints of marijuana on a double album fold-out record cover suggests that the setting is at least ten years ago. There’s no pretense that this is about universal experience here; Gibbon writes about an important phase in a young woman’s life, and she writes about it well.

Categories: Fiction