The pool is located deep undergrounw, in a large cavernous chammber 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, brokwn hearts, anxiety, melancholia anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. Others of us are employed at the college nearby and prefer to take our lunch breaks down below, in the waters, far away from the harsh glares of our colleagues and screens.
From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel that "starts as a catalogue of spoken and unspoken rules for swimmers at an aquatic center but unfolds into a powerful story of a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s love" (The Washington Post).The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. When a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.
One reviewer wrote: "As the book progresses, I found [the crack at the bottom of the pool to be] a clear metaphor for the beginning of Alice's demise, the crack in her mind so to speak." Now I'm into the book and enjoying it so far.
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