CITY POOL

Longlisted for the 2020 Sapir Prize, Israel's most prestigious literary award, this collection tells the stories of different women (and one man!), young and old, who all swim at the same local pool as we find out just how connected they really are. There are some incredibly poignant, raw, and honest moments in these stories - about what it means to be a woman, about illness and motherhood, love and loss.

When the young woman jumps from a building in a shocking suicide, Ilana wonders, for a moment, if the harsh words they traded that morning had anything to do with it. She doesn't notice her husband lock himself in the bathroom and cry over the news.
In the changing room, another woman watches her nose start to grow and shift in the fogged-up mirror. The pool is a place where she comes to silence her thoughts, and now she cannot look in the mirror or she will have to think about the diagnosis she just received at the doctor's office yesterday.

A lifeguard stands watch over the lanes, restlessly waiting for everybody to go home so the mysterious nighttime swimmer can return to do her laps in silence. He loves her, but even after she tells him her family secrets, his love goes unrequited. He sits at the edge of the pool, lonelier than ever, waiting for her to return.

The six stories in CITY POOL offer an unflinching look at the range of human experience that emerges from the touchpoint of a community swimming pool. For these men and women, water is a sanctuary. Bolle's characters share a preference for this solitary exercise, as well as a deep loneliness amplified by the bustling Tel Aviv cityscape. The women grapple with illness, postpartum depression, jealous rage, infidelity. The men try to fill the emptiness in their lives. And we, the readers, recognize ourselves in their stories.

ADVA BOLLE is an Israeli screenwriter and the author of CITY POOL (Kinneret 2019) which was longlisted for the 2020 Sapir Prize. THINGS THAT I KNEW ABOUT R (Hakkibutz 2012) was awarded the Rabinowitz Foundation Grant. Her short stories have been published in the anthology Twenty Shorts (Kinneret, 2018) and in various other literary publications. Bolle is also the screenwriter for many of Israel's most popular drama series and a content editor for the drama department of Israel's "Kan 11" station. She was awarded "Best Actress of the Year" in Israel in 2017. She is a mother of two and currently lives in Hertzliya.