The Girl in a Swing is the fourth novel by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down

Watership Down

Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...

. It was first published in 1980. Subsequent editions changed the female lead's name from Kathe Geutner to Karin Forster, due to threat of a libel suit from someone with that name. It was adapted by director Gordon Hessler

Gordon Hessler

Gordon Hessler is a British film and television director, screenwriter, and producer.He was raised in England and studied at the University of Reading. While a teenager, he moved to the United States and directed a series of short films and documentaries...

 into a 1988 film

The Girl in a Swing (film)

The Girl in a Swing is a 1988 supernatural thriller film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Richard Adams. The plot concerns a British art dealer, who travels to Copenhagen where he falls in love with a beautiful and mysterious woman. The film was directed by Gordon Hessler, and stars Meg...

 starring Meg Tilly.

Plot summary

Alan Desland is a socially awkward Englishman who makes a living as a collector and dealer of fine pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

. On a business trip to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, he falls headlong in love with a mysterious and beautiful young woman named Käthe (or in some editions, Karin), who does clerical work for him and one of his colleagues. After ten days of mutually infatuated courtship, he proposes marriage to her despite knowing nothing about her family or background. She accepts on the condition that their wedding should take place as a civil ceremony in England, and appears to have no interest in inviting any relatives or friends of her own from Europe.

In the event, their marriage and honeymoon end up taking place near Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, thanks to the intervention of an American acquaintance. Her playful sensuality overwhelms Alan, continuing to captivate him and their entire social circle after their return home to run his family's ceramics shop. However, Alan's psychic senses (mostly latent since adolescence) begin to warn him that something has gone wrong, building up to a catastrophic revelation of tragedy.

Characters

• Alan Desland

An English ceramics dealer and collector. Until he meets Käthe/Karin, his personality is very reserved to the point of asexuality.

• Käthe/Karin

A young woman from Germany whom Alan meets in Copenhagen. In Adams' original manuscript, she was named Käthe Geutner, but almost all of the first editions with that name were withdrawn from print because of a libel suit by a real woman with the same name. In subsequent editions, her surname was variously changed to Forster or Wassermann; her first name was sometimes also changed, to Karin.