Letters Lead Home
“Letters lead home in search for lost twin/Author revisits Texas and a tumultuous kinship”
-From The Dallas Morning News
Brother to Brother
“Because it’s a memoire by a writer for Good Morning America (complete with a cover blurb from Diane Sawyer) you might assume that “The History of Swimming” is another of those trite “uplift” sagas so favorted by TV. But “Swimming” is nothing like that. It’s an exquisitely written examination of the limits of fraternal love - and of what it means to be a gay man who’s a survivor in the age of AIDS. Kim Powers and his fraternal twin brother, Tim, were close as children, somewhat estranged as adolescents, and after that pretty much at loggerheads. While Kim made a successful life for himself, Tim, who is also gay, drifted about, fell into alcoholism, suffered nervous breakdowns, and made attemtps at suicide. The book captures all this through the device of a specific incident in which Kim finds himself searching for a suddenly vanished Tim, encountering lovers, friends, and strangers along the way. Kim fully expects to find his brother dead. It’s a measure of their relationship that he not only expects this outcome but is at peace with it. “The History of Swimming” is a “work of mourning,” conceived in advance of the deceased’s actual death. Along its course Powers offers any number of insights both personal and cultural. He observes of the gay scene the brothers encountered in college - as weith everything else, Kim came out before Tim — “I got angry that they were all doing each other, and I was the only stupid fag on campus who was bearing the cross of actually saying I did it.” What he “says” in this memoir is about more than fraternal love in crisis. It’s the bittersweet song of love and loss an entire generation of gay men has sung - though rarely as sweetly as Powers does. “The History of Swimming” is gay literature on par with Denton Welch and James McCourt, with every so often a touch of the great Joe Brainard. In short, it’s a supremely necessary read.”
David Ehrenstein
– From The Advocate, October 24, 06
“The punched-in-the-gut effect of this raw and engrossing personal tragedy, which Powers tries to soften by exposing the humor of these self-dramatizing, self-absorbed, literary 20-somethings: “I watched ‘The Shining’ and thought it was my life,” he writes. “I read ‘Sophie’s Choice’ and thought I had it worse.” When the search for Tim ends, we still haven’t entirely figured out these two young men in free fall. But Powers has an unexpected, final story to reveal, “the one I don’t want to tell, but know I must.” After the swimming ends, Powers’s true self and his ability to love his brother unconditionally finally come to the surface.”
– From The NY Times Book Review, Sept. 17, 06
“Reading so many books for ISO I have gotten quite used to picking one up, reading part of it, putting it down, starting another…. But once I picked up The History of Swimming I could not do another thing until I had turned the last page. Kim Powers has crafted a memoir about his search for his missing twin brother with such skill, energy and emotion that you can’t help but be drawn into their lives. You’ll desperately want to help Powers in his search, frustrated that you can’t be by his side, holding his hand, giving him a shoulder to cry on or offering up a solution. More than just his search for a brother who disappeared, Powers takes you from New York to Texas through their first loves, their coming out, their mother’s death. He sweeps you up into the drama of their lives and how closely this family will resemble your own. His search for his brother becomes more than just a hunt for a missing family member—Powers must find his own identity, and come to terms with those closest to him. I won’t tell you what he finds at the end of his journey, but I will tell you will be sorry if you let this read escape you.”
– Michael Connor, Insightout Book Club
“A haunting memoir… Powers writes with insight and intelligence about his brother’s flaws and fears and the telepathic tendencies of souls separated by a few breaths.”
– From Booklist, September ‘06
“A frantic search for a twin brother who has vanished to a haze of suicidal alcoholism.”
– From The Washington Post’s Fall Book Preview
“Powers’ search for his missing alcoholic, suicidal twin (they’re both gay) becomes a wild odyssey in this unusual memoir.”
– From Out’s Fall Preview - Five Can’t Miss Queer Picks
“A poignant, suspenseful memoir”
– From The Advocate’s Fall Preview
“A powerful nod to familial bonding, written with verve and genuine affection.”
– Starred Review in Kirkus Reviews June 15, 2006
“Powers’s strength in relating his own personal struggles within the context of his twin’s holds this unique memoir together.”
– Publisher’s Weekly 7/10/06
“This is a riveting memoir, sensitive, wise and unsparring. “The History of Swimming” teaches so much about lives where the ‘beams of love” are interlaced with jagged glass. Twin brothers, joined forever in hope and pain and laughter — and longing — for the place they can swim in the sun.”
– Diane Sawyer
“There’s an artful conceit to the premise of this account by Kim Powers of an emotionally fraught three days he spent in his late 20s looking for his alcohol-besotted and suicide-prone twin brother, Tim - a brother he loved and loathed, at that point in their lives, in equal measure. Tim wasn’t dead after all – he was just drunk, off on another lost-weekend bender. In fact, AIDS killed him a few years later, a passing recounted in a heart-wrenching coda. But Powers’ account of his frantic cross-country search for his damaged-goods twin, peppered with flashbacks to their younger days, is a testament to the unbreakable brotherly bonds underlying their difficult relationship as adults. Tim’s wasted life, the shattered mirror to Kim’s, makes for profoundly painful reading - all the more so because letters the gay brothers exchanged as they grew up show that Tim, even in the midst of his first nervous breakdown, possessed a playful wisdom and a lyrical way with words. “The History of Swimming” - swimming was one of Tim’s passions - is a mesmerizing memoir.”
– Syndicated Review by Richard Labonte
“When screen and TV writer Powers’s twin brother, Tim, a gifted but suicidal alcoholic, disappears from Manhattan one weekend, Kim, the “successful” brother, imagines that the clues to his whereabouts are hidden in a series of letters he’s received from Tim over the years. The letters, about growing up gay in Texas, their mother’s early death, Tim’s nervous breakdown in college, and a best friend’s brutal rape, are excellent material in an already well-written book. Once the author begins the search in earnest (dispensing with vaguely located reminiscences and various thematic digressions about water that interrupt the narrative flow early on) and allows Tim’s detailed, brilliant letters to speak for themselves, the book becomes an often humorous, moving look at one man’s complicated relationship with his brother. It is one of the few recent memoirs to revolve around an actual plot, which gives it a distinct advantage over other contemporary stories about coming out in hostile territory, the dark specter of an AIDS diagnosis in one’s family, or coping with a mentally ill relative. Highly recommended for all public libraries. ”
– Library Journal
“Kim Powers has written a personal and powerful memoir about life with his twin, detailing their relationship from the womb to adulthood with unfettered honesty. With the eye of a crack journalist and the heart of a loving brother, Kim has written a story that will appeal to those who have loved “the least of their brothers”: the addict, the mentally ill, and the emotionally distant.”
– Adriana Trigiani, author of “The Big Stone Gap” trilogy
“As ‘memoir’ becomes an increasingly prevalent category—despite, or because of, a recent contretemps over a particular title—it’s no surprise to find several coming from publishers of gay/lesbian works.
Don Weise, senior editor at Carroll & Graf, which typically publishes about 20 gay-themed books a year, had no hesitation in picking out his favorite book for the coming season. The History of Swimming, a memoir by Kim Powers, is billed as “a harrowing and moving account of the author’s frantic search for his twin gay brother, who disappears from New York City one weekend.” Powers is already confirmed for a Good Morning America interview with Diane Sawyer, and has found another booster in author Adriana Trigiani. “The main reason I love this so much,” says Weise, “is that, though it will definitely appeal to a gay readership, it’s such a bigger book in so many ways—it will easily find a mainstream audience. It’s for anybody who’s ever had a troubling sibling relationship, or a difficult family relationship of any kind—and that’s got to be just about all of us!”
–Quitting Brokeback
Publisher’s Weekly 5/8/06
