Description

From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic

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.

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

Publisher Review

Here comes the new Julie Otsuka novel, so we can begin to live again * Colson Whitehead, author of Harlem Shuffle * Heartbreaking and astoundingly good * Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers * An unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters by a spellbinding talent * Daily Mail * Stylistically ambitious and deeply moving * Kirkus Reviews * A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women * Telegraph - In praise of The Buddha in the Attic * A goddamn heartbreaker * Emma Straub, author of The Vacationers * A story of memory loss and its fallout for family, and of the power of pool friendship. Glittering and tender. * Sainsbury's Magazine * Powerfully moving . . . intensely lyrical . . . verges on the edge of poetry * The Independent - In praise of The Buddha in the Attic * Intriguing . . . fleeting, singular images pile up and reverberate against each other to strange, memorable effect * Metro - In praise of The Buddha in the Attic * Sweeping, symphonic, empathic . . . subtle, infinitely skilful . . . an exhilarating, compulsive read. Otsuka's haunting, heartbreaking conclusion, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, is faultless * Daily Mail - In praise of The Buddha in the Attic *