Seven books in which swimming says something about life

Katherine Brabon is the award-winning author of The Memory Artist and The Shut Ins. Her writing has been supported by Art Omi New York and the UNESCO Cities of Literature International Residency. She lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.

Body Friend is Brabon's U.S. debut.

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven

books in which local pools or other bodies of water are a kind of character, where swimming says something about life. These aspects aren’t necessarily the driving force of a book—while sometimes swimming is a constant thread through a person’s life or at a challenging time, in other books they make up incidental moments that nevertheless speak to something about bodies, relationships, or life.

One title on the list:

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

Otsuka’s novel is one that best captures the community and liveliness of the pool changing room. Tellingly, the novel opens with a beautiful set piece describing the pool and its occupants in the first person plural: “Most days, at the pool, we are able to leave our troubles on land behind.” There is a sense of ritual, almost of religiosity, in how this collective chorus approaches the pool. Otsuka’s characters are proud of their devotion: “There are those who would call our devotion to the pool excessive, if not pathological.” The pool then becomes a potent metaphor as cracks develop in its foundation, and the focus turns to the character Alice, one of the swimmers, who has dementia. This honing in on one swimmer made me consider all the many different lives of the swimmers I encounter each time I visit the pool.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue