Alex: The Quartet by Tessa Duder

One young swimmer pursues an extraordinary Olympic dream

Good Condition - Covers show surface rubbing, edge wear and minor corner creasing. Bookshop price sticker on the rear.

Tessa Duder’s four Alex novels follow a talented New Zealand teenager whose ambition to swim at the Olympic Games must compete with all the other demands of growing up. Alex Archer is determined, intelligent and far from single-minded: school, music, friendships, romance and family life matter deeply to her, even as training requires discipline and sacrifice. Across Alex, Alex in Winter, Alessandra: Alex in Rome and Songs for Alex, her journey moves from the pressures of selection towards the wider questions that come with achievement and change. Set against the social expectations of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the quartet combines the immediacy of competitive swimming with an intimate coming-of-age story about identity, grief, independence and deciding what kind of life to build.