Swim the Fly by Don Calame

This is a sort of double header post… only the second head involved is a little shy.  So I’m going to be lead vocal and my eleven year old son, Cole will be providing backing.  We are very much in tune about this book though.

Swim the Fly by Don Calame is about three best friends – Matt, Cooper and Sean.  Every summer they decide on some sort of goal to be accomplished while they’re on holiday.  This year they’re fifteen so things are getting serious.  The goal is to see a real, live girl… naked!

And so begins an utterly hilarious adventure.  Believe me, there is nothing Matt and his friends consider too risky to try in their search for a view of naked girl-flesh. Matt also volunteers (on impulse) to be the swim teams representative to swim the butterfly stroke at an upcoming competition. The impulse to volunteer was triggered by a girl called Kelly West or as Cooper so wonderfully puts it, “It’s his pants hamster.  It short-circuited his brain.”

Matt has absolutely no chance – swimming the fly is considered the most difficult, actually practically impossible stroke. And Matt’s no athlete, the fact that Coop calls him a “…scrawny, pasty white dude…” pretty much sums it up.

Matt and his friends are absolutely fantastic characters.  Yes they totally rip each other to shreds and none of them can afford to put a foot or a word wrong before the others are taking the mickey… but seemingly this is just how boys behave (see below). I did read a heck of a lot of it with one hand covering my eyes… some of the scrapes they get into are cringe-makingly horrific for an old dear like me.  However, I did read Swim the Fly on the train which was a huge mistake. I am one of those strange people who laugh out loud – on my own, in public, without warning. So to the poor lady opposite me on the Edinburgh to London train (who I hope will be rushing out to buy a copy of this book!) I am very sorry for cackling, giggling and guffawing for the entire journey.

Under the boys outrageous antics though is a very warm and important story about friendship and about respecting boundaries and about the vital importance of staying power and hard work when you want to achieve your goals.  This is brilliant message for our young lads, which is subliminally hidden within the pages of an absolutely rollicking, hilarious, fantastic story.  There is a lot of appeal for girl readers though.  To see into the minds of these boys could be eye-opening and also the girls in the story are wonderfully portrayed as to be very identifiable.  This is definitely not a boy-only novel.

However, the Diva in me has taken up far too much page room.  Over to the expert.

Cole Harvey is eleven years old.  He’s a pretty good reader which means he’s read a decent cross section of literature.  However this also means he’s difficult to please.  He knows what he likes (he also has a house chock full of books, so he has unlimited choice) and he point blank refuses to read anything he doesn’t want to.  (I may have trouble ahead with this staunch heel digging.)  Oh, and he is also my son.

Swim the Fly is absolutely one of my favourite books ever.  I loved the way Matt and Coop and Sean talked to each other – it’s just exactly the way I talk to my friends.  We call each other names and we are really not-nice but not in a mean way.  It’s just for fun.  And this is so good in Swim the Fly… I thought it was just like us talking to each other. There were two best bits – the time Matt drank tons of protein powder and didn’t know it was a laxative…  oh that was so hilarious.  Also the bit where he gets thrown into the filthy pool… I loved that.  My favourite character was definitely Coop.  He was completely mental and he just had to have a plan for everything, but then his plan always went to hell.  I knew they should never, ever trust Coops plans.  But that made him really funny.  I really liked him.  There were never any boring bits and every page had something happening and usually something funny… like Matt’s Granddad, he would come along and make me laugh.  The book is a bit vulgar but it’s in a funny way, like South Park.  I thought it was totally awesome and one of my best books of all time.

So there you go.  From a boy who knows his books. But also from me.  There’s just not enough funny books around just now and I’m thinking in these austere and just-a-little-bit-crap times, we all need a damn good laugh. This book could be loved by boys or girls, but boys I think could do with some reading encouragement.  And I am pretty sure that if you bought them a book about seeing a girl naked where the characters dress up as girls, accidentally take laxatives and crap themselves in just the worst place, puke in a swimming pool, get caught hiding in a wardrobe (SO funny!) and are just about the best friends in the world ever, then you’ll have done a “good” thing!

Plus you can sneak it and read it yourself!  Do!  It’s insanely funny

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