The swimmers are unknown to each other except through their private routines (slow lane, fast lane), and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But 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 internment camp in which she spent the war. Narrated by Alice’s daughter, who witnesses her stark and devastating decline, The Swimmers is a searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss, written in spellbinding, incantatory prose.

Let’s start with a clarification–this isn’t a story. Stories include characters and plots and goals and conflict. This book contains none of those. This book is a collection of thoughts and observations, first about a group of swimmers at a public pool, then about Alice’s slip into dementia.

As a story, it gets one star — there’s nothing about this that pulls you into an event and keeps your attention (unless you’re a lap swimmer and really want to read about a below-ground pool). It also makes a giant jump from the swimmers to Alice with the slimmest of transitions.

As a fictionalized personal essay, it might get two or three stars — there’s no beginning/middle/end, so it doesn’t even fit into that category either.

Poetry? Maybe (in a free form classification).

Are the words beautiful? Absolutely. Is it haunting? Yes. Enjoyable? Not really — it’s pretty depressing, and there’s no chance to develop an emotional connection with the characters, so it’s hard to care what happens to them. Is it memorable? Yes, in a what-in-the-world-did-I-just-read sort of way.

This is my big beef with much literary fiction: it’s called a ‘novel,’ but it’s a novel in the same sense that a 2-year-old hitting piano keys is playing a song — the basic components are there, but without any sort of structure, it’s a bit of a mess.

If you want to read some creative descriptions of swimmers followed by the sad descriptions of a selfish daughter watching her mother suffer from dementia, this is for you.

Rated PG. Get your copy here.

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