I'm as much a fan of 400+ page sagas as the next reader, but sometimes a short, pithy book that makes my brain work is just what I need. Julie Otsuka's The Swimmers is one such book and clocks in at 192 pages.

Otsuka (The Buddha in the Attic; When the Emperor Was Divine) writes a book every ten years or so and they are well worth the wait. The first half of this one is about a group of dedicated—one might say fanatic—swimmers in an urban pool who discover a crack at the bottom of the pool. The second half follows one of these swimmers as she deals with worsening dementia and is moved into a memory facility.

Otsuka's observations about the swimmers are thoughtful, funny and acute—she's as good as any trained anthropologist, and the section in the facility is sometimes unbearably moving. I can't say I know exactly what the book is about but that's half the appeal. Weeks after I read The Swimmers  thoughts and questions about the book popped up in my head at random moments like seal heads in the ocean.

And if you like short novels, here are three more that are excellent, and to me, unforgettable:  Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (116 pp); Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (114 pp); and A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (160 pp.)

Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.

Previous Enthusiasms:

• William Craig on Rockwell Kent’s Witness
• Emma Nichols on Laurie J. Marks’ Fire Logic
• Jared Jenisch on Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines
• Allie Levy on Shea Ernshaw’s A History of Wild Places
• Rena Mosteirin on Hannes Bajohr’s Blanks.
• Peter Orner on Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma stories
• Carin Pratt on Sarah Winman’s Still Life.
• Sam Kaas on David Benioff’s City of Thieves.
• Kari Meutsch on Station Eleven, the book and the series
• Jared Jenisch on Nastassja Martin's In the Eye of the Wild
• Allie Levy on Louise Erdrich's The Sentence.
• Rena Mosteirin on Little Women
• Peter Orner on poet Ruth Stone