Swim the Fly

Matt, Sean and Cooper (Coop), 15-year-old American boys, each year set themselves a goal to be achieved before their summer holidays end. Earlier years have seen them happy to limit themselves to fairly innocuous aspirations but, as Matt, the novel’s narrator expresses it, ‘Over the past few years, the goals have become more centred around girls and sex.’ More specifically, this year their ambition, originating with Cooper, is to see ‘a real, live naked girl’. The trio’s progress as they proceed on their voyage of discovery provides the subject matter for Calame’s novel, described in a ‘Parental Advisory’ panel on its back cover as containing ‘strong language, explosive laxative use and (Coop hopes) female nudity’. Well, the language is certainly ‘strong’, particularly in its numerous sexual references, though it is extremely unlikely that – a few specifically American idioms apart — there is anything here that will be unfamiliar to most of today’s teenage readers. As for the ‘explosive laxative use’: this is a pointer to one of the novel’s key moments of embarrassment (for reader and protagonist alike) in which an unfortunate mix-up involving a laxative and a protein powder preparation results ultimately, for the hapless Matt, in ‘a rumbling thunderclap in my boxer briefs followed immediately by full deployment’. There will, beyond argument, be readers who find all of this hilarious — but there is much more besides, including some _ brilliantly sketched minor characters and, very touchingly in places, several reminders of just how lonely, frustrating and insecure young male adolescence can be.