Why would someone walk away from the life she's built and everyone she knows? That's the haunting question which hangs over the delicately-paced story of Sara Freeman's debut novel “Tides”. Mara arrives in a seaside American town just as the busy tourist season is waning. It's achingly appropriate that she chooses to go somewhere in a season out of sync with the pattern of most people's lives. She's fallen out of time's rhythm and now she's in a dangerous free fall. Though this community is affluent she is terrifyingly aware of her limited funds and she doesn't want to use any credit cards because she might be traced. She gets by on scraps of food, sleeps rough, swims in the sea at night and takes a menial job in a local wine shop. A connection she forms with a man who appears similarly adrift is less about starting a new relationship and more about acknowledging their parallel disconsolate realities. Though her existence seems perilously reduced “This is exactly what she wanted, she must remind herself: to slip into a blind spot, to run out on her life.” Written in a spare, emotionally-charged style, this novel gradually unfolds to reveal the aching truth of her past and raises stirring questions about the narratives we use to shape our lives.
What's so moving about this story aren't the sombre facts of Mara's life, but the way it patiently lays bare the psyche of its protagonist. Ample blank space is allowed on the page between passages as if to represent the vacant spaces of time Mara's new wayward existence gives her. Her motives aren't necessarily to rebuild or to start afresh as with most characters who've experienced a devastating loss, but to disentangle her ego. Does her mother really resent her? Is she really inferior to her brother? Did she really fail her husband? These are issues which plague her and it's difficult to know whether this was her actual position in relation to those closest to her or if she's brutally recasting her role in their lives as a form of self punishment. There's a sense that she wants to lose her former self and become someone new but she's unable to shake her personal history. “She can feel it, the past, grabbing, pulling... It takes her wherever it wants her to go; this is the mind's undertow.” Physical encounters with the sea and imagery about the ocean are poetically built into the narrative. It's poignant how this suggests a daily pace to the world which Mara can no longer keep up with because of the enormity of her grief. Though this novel has an undeniably melancholy tone it's not devoid of hope and I appreciate how its extreme example shows how self doubt has the potential to utterly devour us if we don't meet society's expectations or reach the milestones set before us. It gives the reader a lot to quietly consider and reflect upon.
