Solange wir schwimmen

They feel at home in their swimming pool, where they can leave their worries behind as they take their daily laps: designers, nuns, dog sitters, vegans, policemen, professors, actors... Until one day, a crack appears - at the bottom of the pool, but also in the memory of Alice, who, like the others, has always found comfort and support in swimming here. While she soon only swims in fragmentary memories, her daughter tries to put herself in her mother's place, to explore their relationship anew and to give Alice's life back meaning and context.

Julie Otsuka writes about love and loss, grief and memory, mothers and daughters, and the big question of what we owe our parents, from perspectives as diverse as they are startling, and with an incomparable sense of the comic within the tragic.