Dear readers, I just got back from vacation! This was a particularly fun one. For the past few years, my in-laws have arranged an annual end-of-summer getaway, renting a cabin on a lake in their native Maine for a few days so that everyone can relax together before the season ends. It’s hot and sticky and rustic, and chaotic in the best way. My young nieces and nephews dart around between the grown-ups’ legs; we go on hiking adventures and brewery adventures and ice cream adventures; at night we play board games. But the highlight is definitely the swimming. Some family members dip in the lake first thing in the morning to start the day; others dive in later, to cool down after a run. Eventually, when the afternoon is at its hottest, we all jump in for a group break. It is, and I can’t stress this enough, simply the best. The state slogan gets it right: This is “the way life should be.” I’m back in New York now, but I still have swimming on the mind, so here are two related book recommendations. —MJ “The Swimmers,” by Julie OtsukaFiction, 2022
Otsuka’s heartbreaking gem of a novel is split into two sections. In the first, we follow a group of swimmers who frequent their local underground pool for various reasons: “Some of us come here because we are injured, and need to heal. … 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. Some of us come here to escape, if only for an hour, our disappointing marriages on land.” All, though, are united in their monkish devotion to swimming — until, one day, they notice a crack in the bottom of the pool. Is it a threat? A metaphor? Both? And what does it mean for our swimmers, who rely on the pool to anchor their lives? In the second section, the scope narrows to one swimmer in particular: Alice, a retiree with dementia. Here we watch as her illness worsens, as her grasp on the present begins to slip and as her daughter, who fled home in early adulthood, returns to reconnect before it’s too late. Tonally, “The Swimmers” is quiet and understated, but look closely and you realize how complex it is. As the story unfolds, Otsuka bounces the reader between the first-person plural collective of the pool community, a second-person Alice and a second-person daughter. It’s a savvy gambit that enhances the novel’s emotional core. We are these characters, and the novel’s calamities are our calamities. The book is subtle, but it packs a punch. Read if you like: Books by Claire Keegan; a good cry. “The Most,” by Jessica AnthonyFiction, 2024
This book is about one unseasonably warm Sunday in November when an unhappy couple’s relationship changes forever. But for an even quicker description, leave it to the couple’s young son Nicholas: “Mother’s in the pool!” When the novel opens, Virgil and Kathleen Beckett — the mother and father of a WASPy, 1950s family — are living in Acropolis Place, a “sunny, pentagon-shaped apartment complex on the outskirts of Newark, Del.” It’s not paradise, but it’s their home ever since Virgil unexpectedly quit his job in Rhode Island, uprooted his family and moved south. Kathleen seems to be taking it all in stride until the fateful day she wakes up, declares she’s skipping church, throws on her old red bathing suit from college, settles into the complex’s shared pool and refuses to get out. It won’t surprise you to learn that both Kathleen and Virgil are hiding terrible secrets. As Kathleen sits in the pool, she’s looking back on her life, and as Virgil separately goes about his day, he’s likewise looking back, until their individual reflections culminate in a long overdue reckoning. One of the joys of “The Most” is how dishy it is. Here is a couple vigorously and continually making bad choices. There are schemes and affairs and cover-ups. But what elevates it from a pulpy melodrama to a National Book Award-nominated triumph is Anthony’s stylish and incisive prose: She describes one smarmy character, for instance, as having “a voice so soft it sounded stolen.” And she’s excellent at capturing marital discontent. At one point, Kathleen dresses as a crazed spouse to visit Virgil at work: “Emma Bovary in Pawtucket. Bertha Mason. What wife in literature, she thought, wasn’t sick or insane.” At 133 pages, this novel is a fraught treat and a brief but virtuosic literary plunge. Read if you like: “Hausfrau,” by Jill Alexander Essbaum; “Lonely Crowds,” by Stephanie Wambugu; any show on Bravo. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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