THE SWIMMERS

This production sounds more like a memoir than a novel. At its opening we hear the gentle, almost soporific, voice of narrator Traci Kato-Kiriyama introducing a diverse group of swimmers who are doing laps in an underground swimming pool, oblivious to the demands of the world above. Sadly, when cracks appear in the floor, the pool is closed. Alice, one of the older swimmers, is in the early stages of dementia. She, like the pool, is cracking up. The second part of the story follows Alice into a care facility. Kato-Kiriyama recounts Alice's decline and her interactions with her daughter in a perceptive and delicate manner. With compassion, she tells the depressing but all too believable story of how soul-crushing dementia can be. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2022]