Book review: The Lido, by Libby Page

The sky stretches above her and for a moment she feels completely free. She rolls onto her back and tries backstroke so she can watch the birds crossing back and forth… She stops swimming for a moment and floats; for the first time in a long time she lets herself relax. The water holds her. She breathes deeply… She feels like she might cry but it’s OK.

Eventually she rolls onto her front… That’s when she spots Rosemary. The old woman is swimming elegantly towards her. She is wearing a navy swimming costume and a purple swimming cap. As she swims closer, Kate notices that her eyes are the same colour as the lido.

The Lido

Rosemary has been swimming in Brockwell Lido all her life. She’s 87 and her days start with a 7.00am dip in the cool waters. Her life has always been in Brixton and at the lido. When World War Two was raging and the bombs were dropping on London, Rosemary was not evacuated to the countryside like many of her friends, but instead stayed to help her mother. On the days she could, she would find comfort and a sense of normality during her swims at the lido. When she met her husband, George, the two of them built their life in Brixton with the lido ever present. They found their friends and their place in the community in the water and on the poolside.

The news comes that the lido is being sold by the council, who no longer have the money to fund it, to a private development firm who want to fill it in and make a members-only tennis court for their residents. Rosemary is devastated that somewhere so important not just to her, but to her part of the world, can be taken away.

Kate moved to Brixton to become a journalist, but life in London has not turned out like she hoped. She has started experiencing panic attacks and crippling loneliness that she doesn’t know how to talk about or who she can talk about it with. She is given the story of the closure of Brockwell Lido to write about and, through this, meets Rosemary. Together, they form a campaign team to try and save the lido and a precious part of Brixton history.

Step out of Brixton underground station and it is a carnival of steel drums, the white noise of traffic and that man on the corner shouting, ‘God loves you,’ even to the unlovable.

The Lido

This book is such a heart-warming and moving story. Through it, we learn about Rosemary and her swimming-greengrocer George, including some brilliant night-time escapades at the lido. It is cheeky and charming: it’ll make you laugh and put a lump in your throat.

It’s a book about the importance of mental health and asking for help when you need it. It also promotes how exercise can be a really great tool to help you feel better. Both characters experience loneliness: Kate moving to a new city (especially one as big and fast as London), and Rosemary, now that George is gone: both find solace in their daily morning swims. There is a moving chapter where Rosemary goes to the cinema each month to watch a film in the company of other people but then does not have anyone to talk to about it afterwards. The lido becomes not just a place to swim, but also a lifeline: something special that connects them to other people.

It also looks at how important places like the lido are for the community and how, so often, we have lost special places to new developments (one of the old libraries near me, for example, is now a pub targeted at University students). Change is often good, but sometimes we lose something valuable in the process. I loved that Libby Page included, every now and again, a chapter from one of the other swimmers where we get a snapshot of what the lido means to them. The doctor on her way home after a long shift who needs to bathe the day off, for example, and the pregnant woman who is contemplating how much her life is going to change whilst feeling weightless in the water.

I also thought Libby’s descriptions of swimming, moving through the water, the way the light reflects on the surface and the sensations of the coldness, were just wonderful and inviting. It even had me googling ‘open air swimming pools near me’ (there’s one less than an hour away and is now on my summer ‘to-do’ list). Although, each character does mention how cold it is, so we’ll see how brave I am… I defy anyone to read it and not want to go for a dip afterwards!

This is a lovely story about community, friendship and standing up for what’s right, and it was a perfect accompaniment for these long summer days.