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A novel
by Julie Otsuka
Book Reviewed by:From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool - a tour de force of economy, precision, and emotional power.
The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.
One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline. Written in spellbinding, incantatory prose, The Swimmers is a searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss: the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master.
The Underground Pool
The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. Some of us come here because we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. Others of us are employed at the college nearby and prefer to take our lunch breaks down below, in the waters, far away from the harsh glares of our colleagues and screens. Some of us come here to escape, if only for an hour, our disappointing marriages on land. Many of us live in the neighborhood and simply love to swim. One of us—Alice, a retired lab technician now in the early stages of dementia—comes here because she always has. And even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel, the moment she slips into the water she knows what to do. Her stroke is long and fluid, her kick is strong,...
The Swimmers isn't a conventional novel, and at first I found the author's narrative style rather off-putting. Paragraph after paragraph reads like a catalog. But hidden within seemingly random sentences is an amazing amount of detail about the person Alice was before dementia took her memory. The narrative forms a sort of collage of the woman's life, fragmented but nonetheless making a complete picture. I love books that pack an emotional punch, but that do so subtly, without hitting the reader over the head with the obvious; The Swimmers is just such a novel...continued
Full Review
(780 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
In Julie Osaka's novel, The Swimmers, one of the main characters suffers from memory loss due to dementia.
The Mayo Clinic defines "dementia" as "a group of symptoms affecting memory, thinking and social abilities severely enough to interfere with your daily life." It's not one disease, as many different conditions can cause dementia. It's debilitating and progressive, and no form of the malady can be cured at this time (although new treatments may be able to slow a person's decline in some instances). Dementia is caused by damage to or loss of nerve cells in the brain, and symptoms vary depending on which part of the organ is impacted.
Fifty-five million people worldwide are living with dementia, and an additional 10 million cases ...
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