2017 Discussion Thread Q1 - The Tidal Zone - Sarah Moss
Apr 30, 2017 10:47:28 GMT
janetandjohn and geminii like this
Post by pennyt on Apr 30, 2017 10:47:28 GMT
And I'm even later to the party... but here goes. I have to say at the outset that this was a very difficult book for me personally as the scenes with Miriam in the hospital revived memories of a very similar (and similarly traumatic) incident with my mother a few years ago. It's rare for me to be so distressed by a book that I physically recoil from it, but I did from this one many times through the first 20% or so and I was on the point of abandoning it. However, I persevered with a combination of speed/skim-reading for a few chapters and did finish it eventually, but my views of the book as a whole are probably coloured by my own personal experiences.
Anyway, setting that aside, and reviewing previous comments on this thread, I have to say I agree with much of what has already been said. 'I found it very difficult to warm to any of the characters, with the exception perhaps of Rose. Miriam herself I found particularly unappealing, but perhaps she had a lot of her mother in her as I didn't warm to Emma much either! That lack of empathy (coupled, perhaps, with the fact I recoiled from the book due to my own personal experience) made it hard to care much about what happened to any of them, but perhaps in the end that didn't really matter as for me the book wasn't so much about these people and their collective response to Miriam's crisis. Instead I felt it was almost entirely a book about death; about the way it can strike so unexpectedly and randomly; and about how as a society we have become far less accustomed to sudden loss than previous generations were and so find it much harder to deal with. Previous generations accepted as a fact of life high rates of infant mortality. During the war, as we see in the Coventry scenes, the ever-present threat of destruction and death was a given. Even the sudden, puzzling death of Adam's own mother seemed to be accepted as "one of those things". Nowadays, we no longer tolerate death in the same way. We demand to know why such things happen; indeed we expect medical science to have made sudden premature death nigh on impossible.
In that context, I didn't find the ending as unsatisfactory as some others seem to have done. Sure, there's no definite resolution or tying up of endings for the family. Instead for me the ending was a note of acceptance and, stemming from that, of hope. The family have learned to accept their new reality, the fact that they are going to have to live with the knowledge that life is fragile and impermanent. But there are signs this very knowledge will help them to live richer lives - to travel, to take advantage of new opportunities, to get the cat that Rose wants to badly. Even to value each other and their own relationships more. In the words that end the very first chapter of the book "You are alive". And as Adam writes in the next chapter: "Enjoy the bluebells while you can because they are not symbols, just flowers." In other words, don't waste your precious life worrying about what might lie just around the corner. Get out there and live. It's a message for all of us, really. Just as Miriam never discovers what might trigger another episode for her, none of us know what tragedy might lie ahead, the next time we cross a road, or drive a car etc etc. No matter how it arrives, death awaits all of us in the end and so there is no point in anticipating it or spending your life cowering in fear of it.'
So, to sum up - a difficult book for me personally; one in which I found it hard to really engage with the characters; but there are some beautiful passages of quite lyrical writing, and I really like that central theme of "embrace life" that runs right through the book.
Anyway, setting that aside, and reviewing previous comments on this thread, I have to say I agree with much of what has already been said. 'I found it very difficult to warm to any of the characters, with the exception perhaps of Rose. Miriam herself I found particularly unappealing, but perhaps she had a lot of her mother in her as I didn't warm to Emma much either! That lack of empathy (coupled, perhaps, with the fact I recoiled from the book due to my own personal experience) made it hard to care much about what happened to any of them, but perhaps in the end that didn't really matter as for me the book wasn't so much about these people and their collective response to Miriam's crisis. Instead I felt it was almost entirely a book about death; about the way it can strike so unexpectedly and randomly; and about how as a society we have become far less accustomed to sudden loss than previous generations were and so find it much harder to deal with. Previous generations accepted as a fact of life high rates of infant mortality. During the war, as we see in the Coventry scenes, the ever-present threat of destruction and death was a given. Even the sudden, puzzling death of Adam's own mother seemed to be accepted as "one of those things". Nowadays, we no longer tolerate death in the same way. We demand to know why such things happen; indeed we expect medical science to have made sudden premature death nigh on impossible.
In that context, I didn't find the ending as unsatisfactory as some others seem to have done. Sure, there's no definite resolution or tying up of endings for the family. Instead for me the ending was a note of acceptance and, stemming from that, of hope. The family have learned to accept their new reality, the fact that they are going to have to live with the knowledge that life is fragile and impermanent. But there are signs this very knowledge will help them to live richer lives - to travel, to take advantage of new opportunities, to get the cat that Rose wants to badly. Even to value each other and their own relationships more. In the words that end the very first chapter of the book "You are alive". And as Adam writes in the next chapter: "Enjoy the bluebells while you can because they are not symbols, just flowers." In other words, don't waste your precious life worrying about what might lie just around the corner. Get out there and live. It's a message for all of us, really. Just as Miriam never discovers what might trigger another episode for her, none of us know what tragedy might lie ahead, the next time we cross a road, or drive a car etc etc. No matter how it arrives, death awaits all of us in the end and so there is no point in anticipating it or spending your life cowering in fear of it.'
So, to sum up - a difficult book for me personally; one in which I found it hard to really engage with the characters; but there are some beautiful passages of quite lyrical writing, and I really like that central theme of "embrace life" that runs right through the book.
