A Taste of Chlorine, By Bastien Vivès
A small love story makes a big splash
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Howsoever we cut it, graphic novels remain something of a derided form among the chattering classes.
You wouldn't expect a fan of, say, Sebastian Faulks to find himself distracted by what Craig Thompson or Daniel Clowes is getting up to at the moment. And yet, every once in a while, a graphic novel comes along that warrants the kind of attention more typically bestowed upon the likes of the Booker shortlist. Bastien Vivès's A Taste of Chlorine is one such book.
Set largely within the confines of an enormous municipal swimming pool, A Taste of Chlorine is a gentle love story, albeit refracted through the cerulean world conjured up by David Hockney in his swimming pool paintings. A young man suffering from curvature of the spine is advised by his chiropractor to take up swimming. Within the strange, tiled high rise, he lurks at the pool's edge, watching people as much as swimming, an unfamiliar alien figuratively and literally out of his depth. It is during one such bout of people watching that he catches the eye of a lithe young woman and a soft, nuanced friendship begins.
Much of A Taste of Chlorine is wordless. Vivès progresses the plot by serialising movement and expression. A mouthy friend, brought in we suspect to elicit an introduction to the beautiful swimmer, is quickly dispatched. This is an internal world as much as it is a place of hard lines and shifting perspectives. Much as in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Blue, the swimming pool becomes an idealised place in which people travel alongside one another asking the kinds of questions usually reserved for a 3am wind-down. (The hero asks his swimmer friend at one point, "Have you ever asked yourself, what am I prepared to die for, what would I never let go of?")
The winner of the "Revelation" prize at the 2009 Angouleme Festival of Comics, Vivès' book manages to combine the unspoken yearning of Lost in Translation (particularly the underwater message mouthed at the close of the book) with the low-key detail of a film-maker such as Tom McCarthy. What's more, the art is such that you'll frequently find yourself stopping to admire the beauty of a single frame. Highly recommended.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments