The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Otsuka, Julie. The Swimmers. Penguin Random House LLC, 2022.

Julie Otsuka's novel The Swimmers employs both the present and past tenses and is written from a range of points of view. Each new chapter of the novel presents a shift in the parameters and stakes of the narrative world. Few of the characters are assigned names and none of the settings is given an exact, identifiable location. The following summary adheres to a more streamlined explanation and uses the present tense.

In "The Underground Pool," a group of swimmers finds solace in the pool located beneath their city's streets. For some, the pool offers an escape. For others, the pool is a distraction. The pool attracts a litany of different characters, each of whom has their own distinct reason for coming to the pool. Although they are all similarly attached to the underground realm, all of the swimmers must continue to maintain their lives above ground. Their aboveground lives are defined by disorder, unhappiness, stress, and unpredictability. Whenever they are above ground, they long to return to the underground pool.

One individual is particularly reliant upon the underground pool: an elderly woman named Alice who is in the early stages of dementia. Although Alice can remember very little, when she is swimming, she feels in control of her mind and her life. The water helps her to remember the past and thus who she is.

In "The Crack," when a crack appears on the floor of the pool, the pool community fractures. No one can understand or explain the crack. No matter how they regard the crack, they are convinced that the crack is a sign of something worse. Indeed, with time, the crack spreads and another series of cracks appears. Because investigators cannot determine the cause of and thus a resolution for the cracks, they permanently close the pool. On the day of its closure, Alice is the last one out of the water. She feels jarred when she emerges from the showers and into the light above.

In "Diem Perdidi," although Alice's memory is fading, she can still remember many things. Many of the things she remembers are from the distant past. She can barely remember the things her husband said to her earlier that day or what she has eaten hours before. Yet Alice can remember the distinct details of her first child's birth and death. She can also remember her first and lost love. Without the pool, Alice's sense of reality distorts rapidly and she becomes increasingly desperate to hold onto the fragments of truth she can recall.

In "Belavista," when Alice's husband notices that Alice is no longer behaving like herself, he decides to admit her to a full-time care facility called Belavista. At Belavista, Alice has to abandon who she was before entering the facility. Belavista is her new home and her new identity. Everything at Belavista is highly regulated. Alice should not have high expectations for her life here, in that the Belavista staff has no interest in providing their residents an invigorating or stimulating environment.

In "EuroNeuro," ever since her mother Alice was admitted to Belavista, the narrator has been searching for an explanation. She knows that there were early signs of her mother's illness, but she wanted to believe that her mother could never get sick and could never die. The narrator tries to find as many possible reasons for Alice's dementia, desperately hoping that she is not the one to blame. She never tried to be close to Alice. She left home early, moving to the opposite side of the country. She rarely visited Alice out West and never invited Alice to see her out East.

When the narrator visits her mother at Belavista, she cannot help comparing her relationship with Alice to Alice's relationship with her own mother. Alice was undoubtedly the better daughter. Indeed, when Alice's mother died, Alice became entirely incapacitated and immobilized by grief. The narrator sometimes wonders if her mother's death marked the start of Alice's condition.

As time passes, the narrator begins to realize that she has always longed to be close to her mother. During one visit, Alice holds her hand in a way she never has before. The narrator feels a rare and longed-for sense of intimacy. She cherishes this moment, as well as a handful of other memories after Alice's death.