The Diving Pool
Ogawa writes domestic horror in a register so quiet it's almost silent, then lands the knife. Three novellas about obsession and violence disguised as care. The Japanese tradition of mono no aware made sinister.
The same flatness that fans praise reads as a liability to other readers, who say the prose lacks enough underneath the plainness to justify it, with pacing across all three novellas that leaves long stretches where very little happens. The recurring water, food, and pregnancy imagery gets stacked on, in one reader's words, like “Gothic ideograms piled up almost to the point of absurdity,” without ever paying off clearly. The title story's cruelty toward a small child is a dealbreaker outright for some, who say “the sadistic cruel undercurrent was not my vibe at all.” The closing novella frustrates readers who want resolution instead of a “questionable ending I do not understand nor I like,” and a few who came in expecting Ogawa's novels found the two earlier novellas underwhelming by comparison.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
