[2] The book follows Alice, an old swimmer with dementia whose troubles with memory involve her past experiences in a Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II, as well as her daughter's attempts to care for her and reach her in her decline.

[6] Rachel Khong, writing for The New York Times, found Otsuka's prose "powerfully subdued" and an "exquisite companion" to recent events.

[7] NPR called it "a slim brilliant novel about the value and beauty of mundane routines" that "could also be read as a grand parable about the crack in the world wrought by this pandemic.

"[8] The Washington Independent Review of Books admired Otsuka's voice, structure, and approach to the topic of memory.

[9] The Los Angeles Review of Books observed that the novel, along with Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow, offered "new understandings of familiar dynamics" for Asian American identity politics in wake of the pandemic and its subsequent increase of hate crimes.