The Swimmers

Author(s): Julie Otsuka

Location(s): United States (USA)

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): contemporary

Location

Content

Up above there are wildfires, smog alerts, epic droughts, paper jams, teachers’ strikes, insurrections, revolutions, record-breaking summers of unendurable heat, but down below, at the pool, it is always a comfortable eighty-one degrees …

Alice is one of a group of obsessed recreational swimmers for whom their local swimming pool has become the centre of their lives – a place of unexpected kinship, freedom, and ritual. Until one day a crack appears beneath its surface …

As cracks also begin to appear in Alice’s memory, her husband and daughter are faced with the dilemma of how best to care for her. As Alice clings to the tethers of her past in a Home she feels certain is not her home, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship.

A novel about mothers and daughters, grief and memory, love and implacable loss, The Swimmers is spellbinding, incantatory and unforgettable. The finest work yet from a true modern master.

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