For several years, a family tradition has unfolded each late summer in Maine, where relatives gather at a lakeside cabin to unwind before the season ends. This annual retreat, marked by a blend of outdoor activities and lively family interaction, culminates each day with a communal swim in the lake, embodying the state’s slogan, “the way life should be.”
Two recent novels explore the theme of swimming as a metaphor for life’s complexities and emotional currents, each offering a distinct narrative style and setting.
Julie Otsuka’s 2022 novel, "The Swimmers," is divided into two parts. The first section introduces a diverse group of swimmers who regularly meet at an underground pool, each seeking refuge or recovery—from injured bodies to strained personal lives. Their shared commitment to swimming forms a quiet, almost monastic routine until a crack appears in the pool’s floor, raising questions about its meaning and impact on their lives.
The second half of Otsuka’s novel narrows in on Alice, a retired woman grappling with advancing dementia. As her memory fades, her estranged daughter returns, seeking reconciliation. The novel shifts perspective between a collective first-person voice and intimate second-person narratives for Alice and her daughter, deepening the emotional resonance and illustrating the fragility and interconnectedness of memory and identity.
Jessica Anthony’s 2024 novel, "The Most," takes place on a single unseasonably warm November Sunday in a mid-20th-century New Jersey suburban apartment complex. The story centers on Virgil and Kathleen Beckett, a seemingly typical family whose stability unravels when Kathleen abruptly refuses to leave the shared pool, a gesture that sparks a series of revelations.
The narrative alternates between Kathleen’s introspections and Virgil’s separate reflections, revealing hidden secrets and fraught marital dynamics marked by schemes and infidelities. Anthony’s prose captures the complexities of domestic discontent and psychological unease with sharp wit and stylistic flair, drawing literary comparisons while evoking a sense of emotional claustrophobia within a confined setting.
Both novels investigate how swimming serves as both a literal activity and a narrative device to explore personal and relational struggles, memory, and escape. Otsuka’s work is noted for its subtlety and emotional depth, while Anthony’s offers a compact, intense exploration of marriage and identity through an incisive, sometimes darkly humorous lens. Together, these works present a literary immersion into the ways individuals navigate the currents of their inner and outer lives.