[4+] Otsuka's unique style of writing works beautifully in this novel. She starts with a community of swimmers, detailing their relationship to the pool and then narrows in on one swimmer and her daughter. The culmination of everyday facts and lists are rendered like poetry, illuminating Alice's life. The story of Alice's aging, and her diminishment, is so universal. One that we all have observed or fear. It is an achingly sad novel but I loved it anyway.

This is a beautiful but sad story about dementia. I found it impressive and heartbreaking, but did not like the repetitive style and enumeration, particularly in the first half of the book. It annoyed me and made me want to skim read.Thank you Fig Tree/Penguin for the ARC.

43rd book of 2022.3.5. This is a really different read: there are not many novels that use the first-person-plural for the entirety of the first chapter. Chapter One, "The Underground Pool" opens with, 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 above-...

Immediately after finishing Julie Otsucka’s “The Swimmers” I began thinking of who I could recommend/force to read this novel. From the start, I was fascinated in Otsucka’s rendering of a group of regular swimmers who start their day at the pool. For anyone who is an avid swimmer or avid workout person, you can relate to Otsucka’s story.Otsucka uses the first-person-plural, which is like a Greek chorus, narrating the daily activities of the swimmers who frequent this underground community pool.

This book is so so so good. The craft is near perfection. The sentences are evocative. It’s tender. It’s funny. It’s clever. It’s progressively emotional. Ugh. I loved this book.

This is a genuine heartbreaker of a short novel, especially for one whose storytelling approach is so elliptical and enumerative. Otsuka's prose style is impeccably precise and minimalistic, accumulating into five chapters which are unsifted piles of Post-It Notes with different narrative frames whose foci draw ever tighter.The novel begins as a Greek chorus in the 1st-person plural, voicing the collective observations of the regular lap swimmers at an underground Californian university pool: a

Hey Ma, I know it’s been a while. Remember when we last talked? On the phone, I mean, not over text. It was last May – Mother’s Day, in fact. I hope you remember we had a nice conversation that day, that you asked about Cecilia, that you didn’t badmouth Dad, that you had loved the flowers I’d sent. Similar flowers were the culmination of your last text – your preferred form of communication, especially over the last few years – later that month. May 29th, to be exact. It was one that had come un...

I wanted to label this as experimental literature because the beginning section is so unique and poetic and I felt like I didn't know what I was reading, it was overwhelming and confusing and there was so much going on and I liked it and it made me laugh and I was totally relating to it as a slow lane swimmer myself... but once I realized we were focusing on Alice, the retired lab technician in the early stages of dementia, then I got it. Like getting pierced through the heart, by poignancy. I m...

Heartbreaking. Left my chest in pain.

I think I maybe just read a 200 page limerick? This book reads like three short stories instead of one novel. I don’t think that the description of the story on the back of the book captures what actually happens at all. The only reason I kept reading was because it was so short I figured I might as well get to the end. The only redeeming quality was the middle section where the author uses some pretty dark humour and casts an interesting light on what it means for an older adult to move into a

The Swimmers is a book about a group of adults routinely, recreationally swimming at a local indoor community pool but it’s also about life, aging, and family — The book has 3 parts that felt like 2, almost separate, and not in a bad way. “Most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind … And for a brief interlude we are at home in the world. Bad moods lift, tics disappear, memories reawaken, migraines dissolve, and slowly, slowly, the chatter in our minds begins to subs...

The Swimmers is the latest novel by Julie Otsuka. While I loved the beautiful, lyrical, and sometimes haunting writing in The Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic, I truly struggled with this book. The first section of The Swimmers is about a group of swimmers unknown to one another except in terms of their routine in the morning and afternoon at the community pool. In this section, Otsuka uses the first-person plural throughout. One day a crack becomes visible in the pool and begins t...

Otsuka has written three books, around a decade apart. She is one of those authors with such a distinctive writing style, that her books are easily recognized. Her last wasn't a favorite, I compared to to Green Eggs and Ham, not in subject matter but in stylistic endeavour. Nonthless, her books, intrigue me, she writes slim books all with a different subject. This one is as the cover shows, about swimming. The first part follows her collective we voice, showcasing a group of swimmers at a local

| | blog | tumblr | letterboxd | |The first two chapters of The Swimmers, ‘The Underground Pool’ and ‘The Crack’ are highly reminiscent of the author’s acclaimed The Buddha in the Attic. Like that novel The Swimmers at first seems to implement a playful choral ‘we’ as our perspective. The ‘we’ in question are the people who regularly swim at a local pool in an unnamed town. Otsuka details the swimmers’ relationship to the pool and swimming, often poking (gentle) fun at them. While she does oft...

Do you love short novels? Vignettes? Detached writing styles? Weird inexplicable narrative threads and cracks? Heartbreaking hints at the long-term impacts of wartime internment? Spellbinding storytelling? Having your heart broken open? Well do I have the book for you!

i didn't really know what to expect when i picked up this pint-sized novel with the beautiful blue cover. and i'm glad i didn't think too hard about what might be contained within its pages - i wouldn't have been able to anticipate what i found.the swimmers is split into five segments, each focused on a theme, each bearing a distinctive narrative style. "the underground pool" and "the crack" describe a community of swimmers who congregate religiously, devotedly, at a local pool. one of these swi...

It's difficult to review a book as heartfelt and true as The Swimmers. Julie Otsuka has written a masterpiece that will be with me forever.The novel is about Alice, a woman with Pick's disease, a type of dementia. The narrative follows the relationship between Alice and her daughter as Alice's disease progresses. The daughter is a writer and the novel has some of the aspects of the best memoirs.This short novel starts with a chapter about swimmers in an underground pool, probably a YMCA. Each sw...

“We tell ourselves, we’re gonna get through this. But then a moment later, we’ll think, ‘My life is wrecked’”.An Abbreviated Review….every emoji is part of the story in “The Swimmers”….. look carefully….and you’ll figure much out. 😎👙🩲🥽🧬💦🏊‍♂️🏊🏊‍♀️🔪〰️😕🔍🩺💊💉😩❓👀 💔⚖️💋🥡🥠🥠 🎉🥲🌳🍎☕️🥂🥢💍👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨🍼⛑🫐🧠 ⚰️💐🐢 🇯🇵 🧵🪡🐾🍄🌝🌈⛱🎢🪴🌹 🍫❤️🧑🏻‍🦼👨‍🦽🍸📞💅🏻💄🐜🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥭🛁 🛏🖼🛍🎄🚗👚👖🥿🧦👟🧢👜🍵🙏🔑🦻⏰🍌🎶🧮♟📚📝🧁🧃📺🏋️‍♀️🎁🪴🌳😴☔️🧘🏻‍♀️🎄93🪞🎃👻🧺👩🏼‍🦯👩🏽‍🦼🍪☮️🌷🌻🔜🔚🌈❤️A little longer review….[out of context tidbits]….little droplets of hints into this VERY BEAUT...

Had I discovered Julie Otsuka earlier in my life, I could now have said that I’d waited ten years for this book. But given that I only read and loved her previous two books in the last few years, my ordeal has not been nearly as agonizing (although the next one will probably be published in 2030, which is in fact agonizing). Like The Buddha in the Attic, this one is pure poetry, but like When the Emperor Was Divine it also has a plot as well as a protagonist. Sort of. If this 'novel' is in fact

I returned to swimming laps at our modest and cramped city pool two weeks ago. This the third time in two years I've returned to this sacred space, one that finally opened last summer after a prolonged Covid closure, only to close six weeks later due to staff shortages. It reopened at the end of October, then closed again before Christmas because, again, staff shortages. Now it has a drastically reduced schedule. I slip in a workout at lunch or swim in the late afternoon when I'm tired from work...