https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/22/the-pool-fiction-t-coraghessan-boyle
We once considered a house with a swimming pool, but Phil, having had one as a child, nixed it, saying it was too much responsibility and insurance, and this story tackles that. The protagonist, a rather dyspeptic man for someone in his early thirties, allows his house to become party central for his friends and family and several issues arise over the pool. This feels like a story John Updike might have written forty years ago. Perhaps Boyle did or perhaps he's remembering such a house and pool.
I am pretty sure I read one or two Boyle novels back in the day but they were much less upper middle class than this one. I will have to investigate.
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I'm not sure why, but Boyle is one of those writers I feel I should like, but just could not get into at all.
I finished the Patrick Ryan collection (I'm waiting for his first book, which is described as a series of interconnected short stories) and I'm reading the Walter Tevis collection THE KING IS DEAD. Most of the early stories in the book are pool hall/hustler stories, well written but samey. There are a couple of science fiction stories too.
Growing up, my brother and I pushed and pushed for a pool. Dad pretty much said no, year after year, as there was the public pool, McCree, a mile away where we took lessons. So, we did not need one. The neighbors across the street had a pool and there were neighborhood issues over it. He also was sure that the expenses to maintain and insure the pool were crazy and he did not want to have to work on it.
I came back to this house in 2017 and have watched as the pools across the street and around the block have needed weekly work. Have heard the horror stories. Dad was right.
In Texas a pool makes some sense, Kevin.
Don't think I ever read any Tevis.
When THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT mini-series came out, I read the book and a couple of others.
I read the Queen's Gambit some time ago and enjoyed the series too.
This sounds interesting, Patti. Oddly enough, my husband and I have talked about whether we'd ever want a place with a pool. For example the same reasons, we've never wanted one.
Mine's up now, Patti. "Half-Pint Hercules" by William Lindsay Gresham.
I have read a few stories in Boyle's short story collection Without a Hero. I should try more of them.
You should definitely read Tevis, Patti. I've never read a Boyle story that didn't have a thread of stupidity running through it. (And I first read his work in 1978. John Irving has consistently struck me the same way, but I've only read the short stories of Boyle, since that's what I've encountered more often...only two novels by Irving, for obvious reasons.)
I thought I remembered you reviewing it.
Mine finally joins Jerry's in being Up, making him look far less tardy by comparison...
Thanks, Todd, because when people talk about the late Jerry House, I get worried.
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