The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

There is something distinctively satisfying in the simplistic form and aural quality of Japanese writings. For me, at least, reading a verse that was originally written in Japanese can feel like listening to myself speak in a calm and meditative voice—almost as if I were a Zen monk uttering a venerated proverb. It’s like every word has been carefully considered, and every phrase has been infused with meaning deeper than what the sum of each word reveals in plain sight. Perhaps it has something t

There is something distinctively satisfying in the simplistic form and aural quality of Japanese writings. For me, at least, reading a verse that was originally written in Japanese can feel like listening to myself speak in a calm and meditative voice—almost as if I were a Zen monk uttering a venerated proverb. It’s like every word has been carefully considered, and every phrase has been infused with meaning deeper than what the sum of each word reveals in plain sight. Perhaps it has something to do with the very nature of the language, but somehow it seems that even in their English editions, the intrinsic properties definitive of the Japanese prose are often mystically preserved and rarely lost in translation. And Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool certainly doesn’t disappoint in this matter.

The book contains three incisive tales from three female voices, each one troubled by a mind-bending experience that seems to have redefined their very sense of reality. In the first story, a teenage girl harboring an incurable obsession for her foster brother suddenly discovers in herself a capacity—as well as affinity—for something unspeakably sinister. In the second story, another girl records the progress of her sister’s pregnancy, carefully taking notes as the sister's physical condition continues to deteriorate in between abrupt episodes of mysterious mood swings. And in the last tale, a young wife with a husband working abroad gets caught in a lonesome routine until an unexpected call from a long-lost cousin causes her to revisit her old college dorm, and witness the bleak boarding house gradually collapse into something more bizarre.

All three stories take a slow and steady flow for much of their lengths before quickly shifting into a hurried pace as they approach their consistently enigmatic endings. And such are their endings that the stories will likely find their way inside your mind even after days of having finished the book. You will find yourself going back to the inscrutable pages over and over again while the question of what really happened remains a disquieting riddle.

All three novellas also include spine-chilling scenes that place sweet delicacies at the center of something deceptively innocent. In these dark, suspenseful, and at times even amusing tales, it seems that sugar is only as sweet as sin.

Prepare to be perplexed. The Diving Pool is remarkably unsettling.