Tides
Sara Freeman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Tides
Sara Freeman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
In a book that surges and swells and sometimes dissipates...[t]he fragmented narrative reflects the littered and eroded interiority of a woman in duress, numbed and dulled by what she’s been through.
Mercurial.
Taut and affecting, Tides proceeds in fragments.
The experience of reading such a novel is like travelling through a series of expertly designed studio flats. You marvel at every interior you come to: a whole unto itself, not a foot wrong in the design. But then you turn the page and enter yet another four walls, the last beginning to fade from your mind. Only at the end are you able to conceive of all these paragraphs at once, imagine a whole tower block of crafted text.
Tides is a brief novel, told in intense, concentrated scenes, some no longer than a sentence..
... a slim novel, but its structure encourages slow and reflective reading. Broken up into brief sections, often just a sentence or two, the text is set on the page like a series of short vignettes or reflections, surrounded by white space that encourages pauses for contemplation. The book is deeply sad, recounting as it does the dramatic and painful end of one family. But it’s also strangely hopeful and beautiful, as Mara makes the brave decision to move forward on her own, into a future that is far from certain but ready for her to make her own..
... sparse and unconventional.
Freeman’s prose is beautiful and translucent. Mirroring the ebb and flow of water, short paragraphs leave lots of empty spaces on the page, enhancing the emotional gut punches latent in the text, while moments of heightened action run uninterrupted. In the end, Mara continues to carry her old and new pains but ultimately reasserts herself, promising readers a glimmer of hope and new beginnings..
Told in image-heavy, crystalline fragments of prose, sometimes only one or two sentences to a page, Freeman’s novel reads like a shattered mirror gradually being pieced together, though the reflection, as in real life, never comes perfectly clear. For much of the novel’s first half, Freeman keeps Mara as a cipher, less a character and more simply a vessel for grief and self-destructive impulses. But as Mara’s character sharpens into focus, the narrative restraint gives way in pieces like a sudden calving of ice. What is left is a portrait of a woman’s psyche pared to the core, to unsettling effect.
An emotionally charged story of wanderlust and longing unfolds in Freeman’s captivating debut.