Hi everyone! Today I bring you a short contemporary fiction called Tides by Sara Freeman. A debut by the Montreal-born author, this is a slice-of-life meditation on change and trying to find a place to call home again. Check out the synopsis and content notes below and then dive into my review.
After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy seaside town with a dead cellphone and barely any money. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her days of self-imposed exile scrounging for food and swimming in the night ocean. In her state of emotional extremis, the sea at the town’s edge is rendered bleak, luminous, implacable.
As her money runs out and tourist season comes to a close, Mara finds a job at the local wine store. There, she meets Simon, the shop’s soft-spoken, lonely owner. Confronted with the possibility of connection with Simon and the slow return of her desires and appetites, the reasons for her flight begin to emerge.
Reminiscent of works by Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, and Marguerite Duras, Tides is a spare, visceral debut novel about the nature of selfhood, intimacy, and the private narratives that shape our lives. A shattering and unforgettable debut.
Content notes include death of a child, broken marriages, miscarriage, infidelity, grief.
Thoughts on Tides
Tides is written in short paragraphs. It reminds me of keeping a diary. While I have dates for my journal entries, Tides is a timeless reflection of the things that life throws at us and how we tackle them. The main character is Mara. She decides to leave behind her life and family, taking a break in a small coastal town. Her days are spent looking for food, managing somehow on the money she has left, and finding inexpensive ways to spend the night. While her name is in the synopsis, it doesn’t come up in the book until much later. I felt that to be powerful immersive writing because it was easier to imagine being her shoes.
The writing is lyrical and succinct. Mara is wise and some of the observations she makes rang true to me. As I prepare for my wedding, her words related to weddings had a thoughtful effect on me: “No one ever warns you: a wedding is like a dream in which every person you’ve ever known shows up and whispers: Don’t fuck this one up!” It alludes to the happy endings that weddings think we have reached while also pointing to the realities of life. I don’t see it as a negative message at all. Having grown up with divorced parents, I know a ceremony and paperwork is nothing to what it takes to be together long term. The ceremony is a way to gather best wishes and then try our best. It isn’t a new beginning, it is another day with renewed energy and hope.
Mara is not a perfect character. She has had tendencies to like men who are already married, and has not been the best to take care of her personal and mental hygiene. In the time she spends in this small town, she unpacks on her past. Her reason for leaving is slowly revealed. I loved reading her thoughts because they look very much like thoughts. We know the context of the things we are referring to and when we think, we don’t need to explain to ourselves. When she thinks “This is not the end of that,” she knows exactly what ‘this’ and ‘that’ are. This sort of writing reminded me of the cryptic ways in which we refer to episodes in our lives without putting them in words.
Her relationship with her family, her closeness to her brother, the effect of marriage on sibling relationships, the effect on child birth and child loss on relationships… There is a lot of hurt and pain in Mara’s thoughts and I gravitated towards this book because I was in a similar mental space when I saw it. I wanted to process what was going on while also seeing it all pass.
Mara’s story is a story of strength. Just because one has had it rough does not mean life is kinder. We have to look within ourselves and decide our next course of action. I don’t think Mara planned on staying forever in this town. At some point, when people were kind to her, I think she had some hope of calling it home. But as things progressed and truths about people were revealed, she made her choice to take the unexpected gift she received and start again.
Starting over again and again, in a new town around unknown faces, is not something all of us can do. I personally would never be able to do it and I applaud the courage that people like Mara have. Their nomadic tendency gives them a sort of strength that I love seeing. I have been finding more and more of these books: Women in their thirties dealing with broken marriages and personal trauma by taking a break, escaping to a place where no one knows them, a planned or unplanned holiday that will be the making of the next part of their lives. The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner was one of them (review link). I’m currently reading Six Days in Rome by Francesca Giacco (out in May, see Goodreads for details) which also touches on similar lines.
Will you read Tides? Find this book on Goodreads and Storygraph.
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