There are subterranean structures specialists and aquatics commissioners.
One important difference is that Otsuka treats the omen with humor, infusing the narrative with the absurdist quality of a small-town mystery. Do the interlopers who briefly join the pool in January to shed holiday pounds really say “Out of my way, lady” to poor sweet Alice, who has dementia? Would a swimmer who seeks to hoard the mysteries of the pool, rather than share them with a curious partner, ever actually change the subject by asking, “Why do you think those dinosaurs really disappeared?” The cultish devotion among Otsuka’s swimmers sometimes strains credulity. Rules are a comfort, because they mean that the pool is always the same: a refuge from noise, family, work, the internet, the “too-bright sun beating down through the tattered canopy of the trees.” Differences among people are washed clean. Swimmers find escape from the “usual aboveground afflictions” - knee problems, addiction, heartbreak. It exerts its buoyant force on bodies, easing pain and making the old feel young. “In our ‘real lives,’” Otsuka writes, “we are overeaters, underachievers, dog walkers, cross-dressers, compulsive knitters ( Just one more row), secret hoarders, minor poets, trailing spouses, twins, vegans, ‘Mom,’.” But once in the water, swimmers are only “one of three things: fast-lane people, medium-lane people or the slow.”Īt this subterranean pool in an unnamed university town, water has a radical effect.
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.ĭoes the community pool have magical powers? It’s easy to think so, reading the opening section of Julie Otsuka’s third novel, “ The Swimmers.” The book begins with a quirkily exultant 30-page ode, relayed in the first person plural and filled with the author’s signature lists.
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