The Swimmers

The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka, is a work of literary fiction and the author’s third published novel. It is preceded by When the Emperor Was Divine (2002) and The Buddha in the Attic (2011). Otsuka’s most personal novel to date, The Swimmers is based in part on her mother’s experiences with dementia and in part on her observations as a recreational swimmer. The book was published on February 22, 2022, and won the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Notable for its innovative structure and narrative style, The Swimmers is partly about a community of devoted swimmers and the rupturing effects of loss and the unknown. Through this group of swimmers, the novel explores the differences between individual and communal identity, as well as the mechanisms used to fortify mental health in a chaotic world. The Swimmers is also an account of a woman losing her memories—and herself—to dementia, and the ways her family copes with their grief and regret.

This guide refers to the eBook edition of this text, published in 2022 by Alfred A. Knopf. Pagination may differ from print versions.

Plot Summary

The Swimmers is divided into five parts. Part 1, “The Underground Pool,” is told in the first-person plural point of view by the titular swimmers, a community of devoted recreational swimmers at their local pool. Though they lead very different lives outside the pool and run the gamut of personalities and professions, they’re united by a shared love of swimming. Their reasons for their devotion to swimming aren’t exactly alike, but they all fall into the same basic categories. They keep coming to the pool to either heal (physically or mentally), escape life’s burdens and frustrations, or feel a sense of belonging. One way or another, the pool gives them something they don’t get anywhere else. Through an accumulation of details, Part 1 seeks to discover who the people that make up this community really are at their deepest and most intimate levels, covering topics such as obsessions and compulsions, group loyalty, addiction, and family dynamics.

In Part 2, “The Crack,” a small crack appears on the floor of the pool, causing anxiety, fixation, distraction, and a lot of wild theories. Experts offer contradicting guidance and theories that can’t be confirmed. In the long run, they have no real answers. The swimmers’ own diverse theories and responses say more about their personalities and hang-ups than about the crack. Responses and theories from the aboveground community prove just as diverse and just as unhelpful. The crack becomes many cracks, but still, no solid answer about the cause or implication is found. The swimmers learn the pool will be permanently closed out of an abundance of caution. The swimmers go through the stages of grief as the scheduled closure looms but, ultimately, are forced to accept their loss.

The focus of the narrative changes dramatically in Part 3, “Diem Perdidi,” from the swimmers and the pool to Alice, one of the swimmers, and her family, told by Alice’s daughter in the second-person point of view. A catalog of the things Alice does and doesn’t remember reveals the course of her frontotemporal dementia. Memories from her youth, like being held at a detention camp during World War II, stay with her the longest. Alice has a husband, a daughter, and two sons. Her first child, also a daughter, died at birth. She almost married a man named Frank when she was young, but he fell in love with someone else, so she married her current husband instead. Alice was very close with her daughter in her daughter’s childhood, and she cherished this relationship. By the end of Part 3, though, Alice doesn’t always remember her daughter’s name.

Part 4, “Belavista,” is told from the perspective of Belavista, a for-profit memory care residence where Alice is sent to live. It addresses its message to Alice, telling her what to expect from her stay there. It assures Alice her dementia will only get worse and any hope otherwise is false hope. It describes what her experiences at Belavista will be like, painting a picture of her final years characterized by the facility’s greed, hypocrisy, and neglect; and by boredom, the loss of her sense of value and dignity, and waiting around to die. All that defined her and her life before now doesn’t matter anymore, Belavista tells her. Her identity isn’t important. Alice learns this will be her last home before she dies. Despite all she learns from Belavista about what it will be like there, she really has no choice about her fate.

Alice’s daughter takes up the narrative again in Part 5, “Euroneuro.” She laments overlooking the early symptoms of Alice’s dementia before finally seeking a diagnosis. Now it seems hard to believe she didn’t realize something was wrong, given how much Alice has changed. She also feels guilty about the distance she created between them, especially compared to how close Alice was to her own mother. Alice’s husband feels lost with Alice out of the house. He continues to live as if she’ll come home. At Belavista, Alice becomes frailer and frailer until she’s barely recognizable. She stops speaking. Eventually, she dies. A neurologist examines her brain tissue and confirms the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, subtype Pick’s disease. Her case will be presented at an important neuropathology conference in Paris called The Euroneuro. Alice’s husband is finally able to move on after her death. The end of the narrative suggests her daughter isn’t quite there yet. It ends on an ambiguous note, a memory in which Alice seemed to want to say something to her daughter but couldn’t.