Into The Diving Pool

photo: www.bookpeopleblog.com

Book cover design is immensely important, not only because because people really do judge books by their covers, but also because books are works of art and deserve the visual treatment of such. Unfortunately, there are few books that I feel actually:

1. Have a good front cover design, and

2. Have a good cover design that actually reflects and furthers the mood and story of the book.

When I saw Yoko Ogawa's collection of novellas The Diving Pool, with a photo of a classroom chair submerged but perfectly upright in a seemingly endless pool of water, as if I could walk underwater and sit right on it, I was stirred by feelings of rippling disquiet and silence, like I really was underwater, holding my breath, the water pressing against me from all sides, perpetually on the verge of unpleasantness, constriction, but never actually crushing.

And this cover seems perfect for Ogawa's slim book. The three novellas within it get more surreal in progression, but they are all haunting and slippery, portraying the world as if sideways or slightly atilt. Unsettling.

In the first one, the narrator is a young girl who lives in the Light House, an orphanage run by her parents. Every day after school, she watches her foster brother Jun practice diving in the pool. She's in love with him, obsessed, and watches his body hungrily. Jun is forever calm and caring, almost as odds with his melancholic past. But the narrator's love for Jun grinds against her cruel tendencies, and Jun's outward appearance might disguise what he knows.

In the second novella, the narrator is a woman who lives with her brother-in-law and her pregnant sister. She details her sister's pregnancy condition, but when her sister finally goes into labor, she doesn't find exactly what she thought she would at the hospital.

In the last story, the narrator is, again, a woman. She lives alone, as her husband is in Switzerland for work. When her younger cousin needs a place to live while he goes to university in Tokyo, she suggests her old college dormitory. They visit the place together and meet the manager, a man missing both arms and a leg. Her cousin moves into the dormitory but is never there when she goes to visit. So she spends time with the manager in his declining health. All the while, a persistent buzzing sound draws her deeper into the dormitory.

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These stories were sparse but powerful, clearly articulating emotions and intentions that most people are afraid to say aloud. Place plays a prominent role in all three novellas, as does darkness, hunger, and loneliness. Each also has an interesting ending that seems almost unfinished, or rather, dropped off, as if Ogawa had written the sentence and then got up from her chair, never to sit back down.

This adds to the eerie feeling that pervades the stories, but in some cases, I'm not sure what the ending is supposed to mean (if anything), and whether or not I should read them as reality or something more explicitly surreal.

Ultimately, this didn't bother me too much, as the lack of clear conclusions gave me the power to make certain connections and assumptions for myself. Maybe they felt unfinished because I just wanted to stay in the worlds longer, and was surprised to find myself forced out just when I thought I was on the cusp of an answer.

7/10 📕