Swallow by Tonya PlankBlue Archipelago Reviews

Swallow

Format:	Paperback
Pages:	402
Published:	December 11, 2009
ISBN:	978-0615280998

My Book Review Rating:

Synopsis

Swallow is the story of a woman named Sophie Hegal, a shy New York lawyer from small-town Florence, Arizona. One evening during a romantic dinner with her fiance Sophie feels a fist-like ball at the base of her throat that renders her unable to swallow.
This fist-like ball, affectionally known as FB wreaks havoc on her life as has difficulty eating, speaking and even breathing!
Swallow is a wonderfully dark comedy about this young woman’s struggle to survive in a world of pedigreed professionals.

Why did you decide to read this book?

Because it meets the requirements of the New Author challenge that I signed up for

What did you like about this book?

Swallow is unlike any novel I’ve ever read before, and I loved it from the first sentence to the last. The characters are wonderfully diverse and larger than life. From Sophie herself to her pornographer father, her gay friend who paints male nudes and her fashion maven friend and confidant oh and her banged-up clients that Sophie tries so hard to prove innocent.

Tonk combines laugh out loud humour with more serious issues of family connections, psychological conditions, and the fight to survive in the Big Wide World.

It’s a great summer read without the chick lit cutesiness!

Share a quote from the book

This is the moment that FB raises its ugly head:

“I scooped up as much soupy marshmallow-covered ice cream as would fit onto my oversized spoon and topped it onto a chunk of brownie. Just as the first bite neared the back of my mouth, I peered into Stephen’s eyes. I began to feel a lump form in the base of my throat. The chewed food was so close to my pharynx that my swallowing reflex pushed it on down, where it met the lump and merged into a larger ball. The lump-ball was about the size of a fist: it was like a fist had grabbed the food. I couldn’t move either up or down…
With the food stuck in this fist-ball I began to panic. I tried to calm down, breathe through my nose. But either ball or the panic exacerbated the blockage and I couldn’t get any air through.”

About the Author

Tonya Plank grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and attended University of Arizona. She moved east for graduate school to Brown University where she studied European Intellectual History. She soon realized academia wasn’t for her, so moved on to Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey. While she was there, Tonya wrote and published several law review articles about gender and the law, law and literature, and international human rights.

Tonya spent most of her legal career as an appellate-level criminal defense attorney for indigents in New York City. While practicing law, she wrote her first novel (Swallow), took up competitive ballroom dancing, and started a dance blog, Swan Lake Samba Girl which won awards from legal websites for the best extracurricular blog by a lawyer!

You can find out more about Tonya Plank here