The Swimmers

Author Julie Otsuka
Narrator Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 24 February 2022
Run Time 4 hours and 6 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Alzheimer’s and dementia, Family life fiction, Intergenerational relationships: advice and issues, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

© Julie Otsuka 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Her wisdom is staggeringly beautiful, implicating each of us

The Irish Times

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

I’m in awe of how this beautiful, graceful novel can hold so much grief and loss and love in its pages: a literary gem.

Nicci Gerard, author of Soham: A Story Of Our Times

‘If it wasn’t tragedy it would be comedy, and it nimbly treads the very narrow line between’

The Tablet

‘One of the marvels of The Swimmers is its unshowy portrayal of the immense drama inherent in losing the mind before the body has expired. But perhaps even more impressive is its respect for the general confusion of living’

Financial Times

Poignant and funny, I’ve never read such a brilliant account of this devastating illness, nor for that matter of the compulsive nature of swimming lengths in a pool.

Collagerie

“The Swimmers” is an exquisite companion. Though it doesn’t answer the unanswerable, the novel’s quiet insistence resonates: that it is our perfectly ordinary proclivities that make us who we are.

New York Times

An unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters by a spellbinding talent

Daily Mail

Stylistically ambitious and deeply moving

Kirkus Reviews

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

As a regular and sedate swimmer, I loved this novel…A quiet and thoughtful story about the small, steady joys of life and how quickly and irrevocably they can become disrupted.

Red Magazine

A story about mothers and daughters, love and loss, it will make you reconsider what’s truly important in life

Kintsugi Magazine

Haunting, ironic and poetic in its resonance, this slender volume is a must-read…Don’t miss this beautifully written, heartfelt, wry and wistful exploration of loss.

Woman & Home

With shrewd characterisation and original observations, Otsuka tells a tale of grief and memory that’s quietly observed yet awash with dark humour and wit.

Spectator

Amid an incantatory litany of totalising losses, there are snapshots of a unique life with all its complications. Superbly realised and incredibly moving

Daily Mail

Haunting, ironic and poetic in its resonance, this slender volume is a must-read

Woman's Weekly

What makes a good life? What is a good death? The answers to these questions shimmer elusively just below the surface of The Swimmers

Stylist

Otsuka’s slender, stylistically ambitious third novel is a marvel, capturing the hypnotic rhythm of lane-swimming and the devastating decline of memory and connection as dementia takes hold…Heartbreakingly powerful

Mail on Sunday, Best New Fiction

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