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A review by bhall237
The Diving Pool by Yōko Ogawa
4.0
“There was something irreconcilable between Sweden, wrapped up in the yellow envelope, and the Manager, coughing pitifully in his room at the dormitory; and yet they were together.”
The Diving Pools is my second book read from Yoko Ogawa and I started it right after finishing Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales. Both are very beautifully written and masterfully executed collections of short stories, but The Diving Pool worked just a bit more with the three longer stories told rather than the eleven shorter stories told previously. What I love about the quote above is it perfectly describes, for me at least, my own form of a panic attack, when so much is happening and I can’t comprehend how all of these events are happening in my life and all at the same time, and yet there’s nothing else to do but accept. Each of the three stories crafts a tale of some underlying disorder in each of our main characters, and each give a unsettling story of obsession, family, isolation, pain, and paranoia. My favorite of the three stories has to be The Diving Pool, as I was hooked from beginning to end with that one, and once I finished it I felt I could do nothing more than curl in a ball and look back at what I had just read, reflecting on the actions that had just unfolded in front of my very eyes. The Pregnancy Diary is very well written as well, and it is a slow burner as the last 10 pages or so are where your anxiety will kick into overdrive. Dormitory is a very nostalgic tale, but one that has layers of unease and a dark history to cloud everything else around the building, luring into a sense of isolation and paranoia by the end. Overall, I enjoyed The Diving Pool immensely, and to see little descriptions of events that occurred in Revenge made me smile so wide like an Ogawa fanboy. Highly recommend this one, and I would suggest reading before or after Revenge, but definitely alongside as the two work wonderfully as companions to one another.
The Diving Pools is my second book read from Yoko Ogawa and I started it right after finishing Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales. Both are very beautifully written and masterfully executed collections of short stories, but The Diving Pool worked just a bit more with the three longer stories told rather than the eleven shorter stories told previously. What I love about the quote above is it perfectly describes, for me at least, my own form of a panic attack, when so much is happening and I can’t comprehend how all of these events are happening in my life and all at the same time, and yet there’s nothing else to do but accept. Each of the three stories crafts a tale of some underlying disorder in each of our main characters, and each give a unsettling story of obsession, family, isolation, pain, and paranoia. My favorite of the three stories has to be The Diving Pool, as I was hooked from beginning to end with that one, and once I finished it I felt I could do nothing more than curl in a ball and look back at what I had just read, reflecting on the actions that had just unfolded in front of my very eyes. The Pregnancy Diary is very well written as well, and it is a slow burner as the last 10 pages or so are where your anxiety will kick into overdrive. Dormitory is a very nostalgic tale, but one that has layers of unease and a dark history to cloud everything else around the building, luring into a sense of isolation and paranoia by the end. Overall, I enjoyed The Diving Pool immensely, and to see little descriptions of events that occurred in Revenge made me smile so wide like an Ogawa fanboy. Highly recommend this one, and I would suggest reading before or after Revenge, but definitely alongside as the two work wonderfully as companions to one another.