The Swimmers

Julie Otsuka

From Shelf: Books that I loved

From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the AtticUp 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.PRAISE FOR JULIE OTSUKA:"Otsuka's keenly observed prose manages to capture whole histories in a sweep of gorgeous incantatory sentences" Marie Claire"Powerfully moving . . . intensely lyrical . . . verges on the edge of poetry" Independent"A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women" Telegraph

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