'Pregnancy Diary' is told in an epistolary format, with the narrator keeping a meticulous journal of her sister's pregnancy and reactions to it. The unnamed narrator of 'Pregnancy Diary' is a young woman who lives with her sister, newly pregnant, and her sister's husband. Jun eventually discovers Aya's sadism, revealing his knowledge of it to her after a diving session and destroying her dreams of a relationship. Rie's suffering and trauma enrapture Aya and encourage her to torment the child until she eventually traps her in an urn, in an emotionally and sexually charged sequence. Aya obsessively watches Jun practice, sneaking into the orphanage's pool room to watch without him noticing.Īs her infatuation builds, Aya also develops a sadistic obsession with Rie, the youngest resident of the orphanage. Aya's parents run a Christian orphanage at which she is 'the only child who is not an orphan, a fact that has disfigured my family' she develops an infatuation with Jun, one of the orphans and a talented diver. The protagonist of 'The Diving Pool' is Aya, a schoolgirl in her early teens. 'The Diving Pool', 'Pregnancy Diary', and 'Dormitory' have similar but unrelated plots. In the original Japanese, the novellas had been published in separate collections up to a year apart, where they were each individually well received. The Diving Pool received a positive reception in translation, becoming an object of critical praise and academic study. The novellas focus on the domestic world, reinterpreting it as a prison for its characters which they try gainlessly to escape the protagonists are at times uncaring, schizoid, or monstrous in their behaviour towards themselves and the world around them. All three novellas have young female protagonists, a schoolgirl in 'The Diving Pool' and young adult women in 'Pregnancy Diary' and 'Dormitory', who feel isolated and alienated by Japanese society and lash out at their surroundings.

The Diving Pool is a triptych of psychological horror stories with a loosely connected theme about Japanese femininity, loneliness, and societal alienation. It was Ogawa's first book-length work to be translated. The Diving Pool: Three Novellas is a novella collection by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa, first published in English in 2008.

La formula del professore by Yōko Ogawa