Swimming Sweet

Arrow

by Maureen Gibbon

Little, Brown, & Co., 224 pp., $21.95

Swimming Sweet Arrow is yet another example of the girl-as-victim genre. Vangie Rayburn spends most of her last year of school doing drugs and having sex with her boyfriend Del. Her big dream is to graduate, move in with Del, and have lots of sex. Vangie and her best friend like to boast that they are “young and dumb and full of come.” Vangie is plagued by the usual litany of problems: abusive boyfriend with drug and alcohol problems, meaningless jobs, absent parents, troubled best friend. Even the end is formulaic — she sees the light, leaves the boyfriend, and re-establishes contact with her long-lost mother. What makes this book stand out from others in the genre is the graphic depictions of Vangie’s sex life, which is mostly abusive. But those scenes don’t serve to drive the plot or explain Vangie in any way. The reader would have been better served if Gibbon had worked more on character and plot development and left the pornography to Penthouse.

This article appears in May 26 • 2000.

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