The Big Secret in Our Small Routines
Julie Otsuka’s <em>The Swimmers</em> finds the beauty in a seemingly unextraordinary life.
Last May, at the peak of India’s second COVID wave, I became obsessed with laundry. My family and I were all in quarantine together, on a week-long visit to my grandparents that was already in its fourth month, and my response to the endless news reports of people dropping dead in the thousands each day for want of respirators was to become manically vigilant about running the washing machine at half past seven every other morning. Horrible, enormous things were happening ceaselessly, and all I could do was watch. So I shrank my days and put them on repeat.
Julie Otsuka’s new novel, , explores a similar response to tragedy: the attempt to ward
