Swimming with Strangers by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

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Synopsis

This Life She's Chosen, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's acclaimed debut story collection hailed as 'haunting and inspired' by The Boston Globe introduced readers to her penetrating and delicate voice. In eight new stories, Lunstrum further explores the nuances and complexities of women's relationships with their lovers, friends, and families in a new collection. Authentic, probing, and graceful, Swimming With Strangers reveals the currents hidden beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary events.

Publishers Weekly

Lunstrum's uninspired second collection of short stories focuses on women unhappy in their lives and relationships. In "Islands," an older couple is prompted to reexamine their relationship after befriending a younger couple on a small Pacific Northwest island, while in "Familial Kindness," the conflict is between a woman and her long absent brother-in-law who returns to town for a funeral. Lunstrum returns often to the theme of love slowing burning out as years pass, as in "Carmel," where the husband reminisces about his wife's once smooth thighs and how she used to revel in parties rather than avoid them. In "The Drowning," a teenage girl is pursued by a persistent lifeguard at the summer camp where they work and her wariness to commit reflects her parents' own strained relationship. While the writing is generally competent, Lunstrum's plotlines veer into the unlikely and the dialogue is too often unnatural.
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Biography

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum was born in 1979 in Chicago and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.