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Diving Pool: Three Novellas
Diving Pool: Three Novellas | Yoko Ogawa
15 posts | 25 read | 27 to read
The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent.A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's?A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, "The Diving Pool "is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.
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review
BallroomsOfMars
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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Pickpick

These are slow stories that twist the mundane into something unsettled and uncomfortable. Maybe it‘s the relatability of the domestic that renders porous the barrier between what is ordinary and what is horrifying. A terrible kind of horror that is not scraping at doors, howling in the night, but growing inside us like mould. 1/4

BallroomsOfMars I love how the stories give just enough detail to grasp some dimension of character, some sense of context, but what remains untold raises more questions than the words give answers. There are no conclusions, just maybe, maybe, and the reader is made culpable as they imagine what might hide in the narrative gaps. The reader has some agency in how they join the dots, and the horror — the size of it, the muckiness — becomes their responsibility. 2/4 2w
BallroomsOfMars Days after finishing, I keep thinking about the freedoms and dangers of invisibility. How, overlooked and unwitnessed, a person can slowly warp out of shape with the world. They can pass through life as observer only, detached from life like a ghost, their sense of culpability corroding with their sense of self. 3/4 2w
BallroomsOfMars I find myself thinking about why the two sisters are living together despite one being married and pregnant. About grapefruit segments, glistening and skinned. About the slow ooze of honey from a split comb. About whether a body, hollowed by absence, collapses in on itself in the vacuum of loss. 4/4 2w
1 like3 comments
review
rachelsbrittain
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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Pickpick

This trio of short stories were wonderfully weird. A girl who's parents run an orphanage obsessed over a diver and mistreats a baby, a woman who's sister is pregnant cooks her jam that might be affecting the baby's DNA, and a dying dormitory manager might have been involved in a students dissapearance--or maybe the woman suspecting him is just bored.

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rachelsbrittain
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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The pup and I are trying enjoy some of this gorgeous spring weather 🩵

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Anna40
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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Pickpick

The characters in these three novellas are cruel, their evil impulses nauseating. Ogawa‘s prose is distanced but poetic. She uses metaphors such as water, snow or food. I agree with Joanna Briscoe: “To read Yoko Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state tinged with nightmare.” Original and eerie.

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Bertha_Mason
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder

"The shoppers passed by, baskets in hand, as if bobbing along on a stream of groceries. It occurred to me that almost everything in the store was edible, and this seemed a bit sinister."
-"Pregnancy Diary"

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jhod
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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Pickpick

Very odd, no idea what was going on but I loved the weirdness, the vivid sensory descriptions and the disturbing but completely believable consequences of jealousy, love and boredom.

79 likes2 stack adds
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BarbaraBB
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Panpan

I‘m a sucker for Japanese fiction so I was eager to discover this new to me author. I started with this book, consisting of three novellas. They are weird and horrible things happen, described with a complete lack of emotion. This may be the point of these novellas but to me it made them too flat and empty.

Kalalalatja Lovely photo, though! 6y
vivastory I haven't read this one, but I thought the following by her was interesting 6y
Reggie I just got this book. Oh no! Because I enjoyed Revenge. (We‘re twinkies @vivastory Lol) 6y
71 likes1 stack add3 comments
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whatrebeccasread
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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Pickpick

It's clear that I've found my new favourite author. This is the third book I've read by Yoko Ogawa and I've enjoyed everyone. Ogawa is a beautifully simplistic story teller and these three short stories are dark but certainly worth a read - 4 stars.

See my full review on my blog using the link on my profile 📚

109 likes6 stack adds
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malloryomeara
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Pickpick

A haunting and quick novella collection!

10 likes1 stack add
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Katerina
The Diving Pool | Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder
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#maybookflowers Day 8 #bodyofwater or rather bodies of water: the sea, a river, a pool. @RealLifeReading

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RealLifeReading
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#aprilbookshowers day 7: #womenintranslation
I may have a bit of an obsession with Yoko Ogawa

Prairiegirl_reading Oooo I just got the housekeeper and the professor!! Must get on that! ❤️ 8y
Moray_Reads I loved the Housekeeper and the Professor 8y
[DELETED] 3216391035 I'm not familiar with this author...what would you suggest I start with? 8y
See All 9 Comments
RealLifeReading @Basia her best known work is prob The Housekeeper and the Professor. So that may be a good start. The Diving Pool is three novellas so that may also be a place to start for a short read. 8y
Moray_Reads @RealLifeReading I'd like to read more, do you have a favourite? 8y
RealLifeReading @Basia I have to admit I haven't read Hotel Iris yet! But I do love the other three I've read. Hard to pick a favourite! 8y
bookwrm526 I loved The Housekeeper and the Professor but haven't read any of the others. Yet 😍 8y
Dylangrrl Excellent taste! 8y
114 likes5 stack adds9 comments
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StaceyKondla
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Mehso-so

This didn't completely float my boat. Yoko Ogawa can definitely write and conjure pictures in your mind. It was more the content of the stories that didn't work for me. The first novella, I couldn't stand the sociopath main character - she was loathsome. The second novella, the pregnant sister was unbearable. The third novella had the most promise, but then the ending was just a weird.

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StaceyKondla
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I'm stepping outside my comfort zone with this book. It is three very literary novellas. We'll see how I like it.....