The Lifeguard
Told via overlapping, time-jumping narratives, Laura Kasischke’s fragmentary novel, The Lifeguard, centers small-town residents whose lives intertwine following a boy’s drowning.
As the residents of Mission Hills, Michigan, grow older, they are forced to face the grim realities of the fateful day at the Jolly Rogers Swim Club in 1969, which is set against the backdrop of the Apollo program and moon launches. A lifeguard was regarded with suspicion following Richie’s drowning, for instance; she later fled to California. Richie’s mother, Marie, struggled in her marriage, while another child, Becca, dealt with her own complicated home life, leading to another death.
The flawed but dynamic cast includes Richie’s brash, angry father, who lashes out at Marie for their money troubles and blames her for Richie’s death. He also insists on leaving work to watch an Apollo launch with Richie, showing his love for his son. Likewise, the lifeguard insists that she hates children and is ambivalent about her job, but she is also careful not to embarrass groups of young girls at the pool.
Flush with sensory details, the sprawling, immersive prose includes both extensive information on how a lifeguard wears her swimsuit and evocative active images, as of Richie’s drowning: “each of his lungs no bigger than a newborn mouse you might find damp and alone in a nest.” Though many questions remain for the residents of Mission Hills at the novel’s end, finality is achieved with Richie’s final chapter, and with the image of the pool “buried under fill dirt,” now a matter of folk legend.
An intricate historical novel, The Lifeguard traces the interconnected lives of Michiganders in the wake of a child’s drowning.
Reviewed by
Jennifer Maveety
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