A crack appears at the local swimming pool, throwing the regulars into disarray; cracks begin to appear in Alice’s memory, blurring the lines between past and present.

This was a curl-up and read cover-to-cover book (or rather, it would have been, sans baby - I eagerly gobbled it up over the course of a day instead) - I found the writing so beautiful that it was hard to put down. The first part of the book was effectively a love-letter to pool swimming. In fact, it felt rather like reading a NYT essay on the joys of swimming, and made me realise how much I miss it (to the point of almost signing up for a concession card for our local pool). The second part was very different, a perceptive and sensitive view of having a loved one with a form of dementia - the gradual loss of the person you know and love, the increasing frustrations (for everyone - Alice’s husband and daughter, but also Alice, who knows something isn’t right, but cannot pinpoint what), the impossible decisions around their care, the guilt. But we also get an insight into Alice’s life, rendered all the more poignant as her memories slip away or blur with the present. Both of my grandmas had forms of dementia, and at times there was a quality to the writing which brought back the repetitiveness of conversations, the feeling of being caught in an increasingly frustrating loop. Now, I will admit that the link between the two parts - cracks in the pool, cracks in Alice’s memory - felt rather tenuous and contrived, but both parts resonated with me so deeply that I’m not even bothered by it. A beautifully-written ode to the joys of swimming and the devastating grief of dementia, a novel of love and loss, of memories and of belonging.