The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka

This 2022 novel is told in first person plural, an unusual choice, but in this case effective. A group of people who swim laps at a public pool give voice to their collective need to be there, to move and to immerse. One of the swimmers, Alice, a woman with dementia, gradually takes center stage, and the story moves into second person singular, chronicling her descent from function to institutionalization, her patchwork memory all too familiar to those of us who have witnessed this decay close up. 

I almost didn’t finish the book – my mom didn’t sink that far before she died but she was headed into the abyss of not knowing anyone, losing language, losing speech. I wrote a short story about her descent, and that was plenty long for me. To channel more of her failing mind would have ultimately seemed cruel – to expose a person whose wit and talents evaporated, must serve some greater purpose. Otherwise, it lays bare a terrible loss – to tell a story? To make her the star of a vortex? 

When I want to say more, I feel her in my heart, angry and bitter that I am using her to make my own point.