In the current issue of the lit and fine arts journal Golf Coast, Garret Dean Johnson reviews UTD prof Matt Bondurant’s novel The Night Swimmer, which came out this summer. Says Johnson:
Like his characters, Bondurant’s prose itself is alive, immediate, often simple and declarative but given to occasional bursts of lyricism. He handles both the rough, wild terrain of coastal County Cork and its attendant vernacular with a kind of seamless, hard-edged grace. As arresting as Bondurant’s depiction of place is a sense of subtle magic pervading everything (the land, the people, the events).
I’m almost finished with Bondurant’s most well-known novel, from 2008, Lawless (first published as The Wettest County in the World). Based on the strength of that work and also on something very violent and funny that Bondurant wrote for our December issue, I highly recommend The Night Swimmer.
