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A review by lauracooper
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
4.0
The trope of the ordinary family facing a medical emergency which tries their relationships is the bones of a thousand TV soaps. Sarah Moss’s The Tidal Zone opens with such a medical emergence, a teenager’s unexpected anaphylaxis and cardiac arrest. It is an incident which would occupy five minutes’ attention on a hospital soap. Moss, however, eschews sensationalism. Instead she takes the incidence and its consequences and stretches out onto a broad, rich canvas, tracing the ripples it sends out through time and memory. She pulls the reader through the narrative with the hooks of so called “sick lit”, but avoids high-octane drama and a simplistic resolution. We are instead given an exquisite exploration of parental anxiety, dependence and human frailty.
The novel is written from the perspective of Adam Goldschmidt, a ‘househusband’ sporadically employed as a lecturer, whose daughter Miriam suddenly and inexplicable goes into cardiac arrest in a field at school. Adam’s voice is well realised, he is astute yet uncynical. For example, when he yearns for normality Moss captures both Adam’s extreme distress and self-awareness well, in “May we live long enough to despise the cliches again, may we heal enough to take for granted the sky and water and light, because the state of blind gratitude for breath and blood is not a position of intelligence.”Adam knows how his crisis pales in comparison to the endless global massacres that flicker by on the news. Crisis and emotional turmoil are written without sentimentality, but it is not dispassionate.We share in Adam’s anxiety which drives him to his children’s rooms at night to check they are still breathing, the novel is tense with foreboding and dread which Moss thankfully doesn’t give into releasing in a sensationalist conclusion.
Book Louse Review
The novel is written from the perspective of Adam Goldschmidt, a ‘househusband’ sporadically employed as a lecturer, whose daughter Miriam suddenly and inexplicable goes into cardiac arrest in a field at school. Adam’s voice is well realised, he is astute yet uncynical. For example, when he yearns for normality Moss captures both Adam’s extreme distress and self-awareness well, in “May we live long enough to despise the cliches again, may we heal enough to take for granted the sky and water and light, because the state of blind gratitude for breath and blood is not a position of intelligence.”Adam knows how his crisis pales in comparison to the endless global massacres that flicker by on the news. Crisis and emotional turmoil are written without sentimentality, but it is not dispassionate.We share in Adam’s anxiety which drives him to his children’s rooms at night to check they are still breathing, the novel is tense with foreboding and dread which Moss thankfully doesn’t give into releasing in a sensationalist conclusion.