"The Tidal Zone" by Sarah Moss

An audio book set near Coventry.

Emma (a doctor) and Adam (it's his PoV - he's the main carer) have a daughter Miriam (15) whose heart stops at school (earlier she'd had "episodes", but her mother had dismissed them). She recovers, staying in hospital while doctors try to diagnose the issue. They also have another, younger daughter Rose.

He has a PhD but only does a couple of hours a week lecturing on the Arts and Crafts movement. He wonders about things/buildings being venerated merely because they are old. Miriam suggests that his interest in history is an avoidance mechanism. He knows a lot about Coventry cathedrals and the bombings (he compares the war-time anxiety of sudden death to how he feels about Miriam). One of the designs for the new cathedral was for an underground "bomb shelter" building. The murals were made by a camouflage expert. Miriam is bright, vocal, political. Adam becomes conversant with hospital codes and conventions - some of the young staff look as if they're "entering a Fun Run dressed as a nurse". Other parents have "broken narratives".

His father went from commune to commune in the States. For him, Europe was more an art gallery than a continent. We're told (I don't know why) about Indigo and Rainbow in the commune, the need to fetch a doctor. He's comfortably off now, having inherited (American, with Jewish parents). Adam's mother died swimming in the sea - maybe her heart stopped like Miriam's did. After 2 weeks Miriam returns home. Adam's father is there. Miriam can't go back to school yet. She worries whether she should be buried or cremated. She may have permanent cognitive deficiency. Adam becomes over-protective. He hasn't had sex for weeks. He's the one who has to deal with the internal politics of universities, hospitals and schools. We see the world (things big and small) through Adam's eyes. He's often the only father at gatherings. He escorts other people's sons to the toilet.

Rose has a bout of wheeziness at a swimming pool. Emma says she wants another child. They make love. They visit his father on the Cornwall coast where he grew up. He and the girls explore rockpools while Emma looks at her phone. They think about holidays - "like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison".

Adam's explanation to Rose about what happened to Miriam at school repeats much of what we've already been told, which doesn't seem quite right. Other episodes are re-told too - not from a startlingly new PoV, but prefixed by "Once upon a time" with self-consciously narratological asides. And Adam ruminates. I know something about the internal politics of universities and hospitals, so those parts seemed rather tame to me. I didn't understand the fable at the end - the book hasn't used them before. Adam's father's life story is of some use to the main theme but I think that could have been reported in a paragraph without the father needing to appear.

Other reviews

• Penelope Lively
• Mandy Wright
• ellethinks (Adam and his wife Emma exist in our world, where their division of household labour is viewed as progressive and vaguely alien ... weaving poetic interstices among the episodes of action that draw them all together, give the reader a chance to breathe. The Tidal Zone is full of social commentary that passes off so casually, usually in dialogue and quite often in sarcasm, that you don’t see it until it’s already happened.)
• thefictionfox (What could have easily become a melodramatic or overly-heavy slog was kept light through its relatable and likable characters. Most easy to like is Miriam herself, as a smart and sassy teen, who doesn’t take any over-protective “bullshit” from her dad. But cautious and protective stay-at-home dad Adam, and rational Emma who uses her medical knowledge as a GP to build up a wall, also make for a lovable cast. ... some minor pacing-issues around the 60%-mark)
• Rebecca Foster (Just as tidal pools mark the boundary between the land and the sea, this novel probes the liminal space between survival and death ... The extraordinary first chapter opens with “Once upon a time” and narrates the quotidian miracles of conception, pregnancy, birth and child development before making this personal, proceeding from “the girl” to “you” and finally to “I” in the second chapter. On several (perhaps one too many) occasions Moss repeats that fairytale opener ... I felt a bit too much time was spent on Adam’s father, and in the back of my mind was the niggling thought that this First World family is never facing true disaster because they have all kinds of safety nets in place; Moss’s is a very middle-class vision. I also think some readers could struggle with the slight aimlessness of the plot, though by the end you do get the sense that the characters are looking to the future in simple ways.)

"My Good Bright Wolf" by Sarah Moss

An audio book - memoir.

She writes that she's trying to be truthful except when she's hiding identities. A voice interrupts when it suspects that there's a deviation from the truth. She's the daughter of Owl (American) and Jumbley Girl. She's the sister of Angel Boy. She was a late reader and felt fat - the bullying was worst when she was 9. She thinks about how the books that she repeatedly read as a child ("Swallows and Amazons", "Little Women", "Little House of the Prairie", "Pilgrims Progress", etc) affected her, giving them a feminist interpretation - she mentioned some of them in her PhD. She's interested in the author/heroine's attitude to food, and the author's approach to truth. She recalls reading "The Bell Jar".

During covid, now a prof with teenage kids, she moves the family to Ireland. She over-exercises, under-eats. By the time she goes to A&E she's on the edge of organ failure. She's 46. Still she refuses sugar, following the advice of the "men of science". She has trouble distinguishing between "care" and "control". She finds she can't write fiction while fasting. She's told to prioritize recovery by giving up work, but she goes on book tours etc - they're not a problem. Her husband and kids do European hikes for holidays. Water is an issue more than food. That becomes a source of arguments too.

She reads about Dorothy Wordsworth, and how she balanced her creative work with domestic chores. She reads about Mary Wollstonecraft and how she coped with male attitudes to female thinkers. She assesses whether these female characters are like 1st or 2nd wave feminists.

She talks about her suicidal thoughts (Mary Wollstonecraft tried, Virginia Woolfe succeeded). On a walk she sees a wolf. Was it a female?

“Bodies of light” by Sarah Moss (Granta, 2014)

Manchester, 1850s. Artist Alfred Moberley marries Elizabeth whose mother is a feminist/socialist (active in the Manchester Welfare Society) and whose younger sister is Mary. They honeymoon in Wales - "There is birdsong but no visible birds, as if the day sings to itself". They settle into a new house whose interior he has designed. But he's an aesthete and meanwhile they lack furniture.

He wants to painted her. She knows that he paints nudes. She has a baby, Alethea (Ally). She resists getting help because her mother thinks it's indulgent. She get depressed, has suicidal thoughts. He sleeps with a customer.

When Ally is 10, Elizabeth takes her and May to see The Home (though Alfred's against it). The girls talk about Aubery (their father's business partner) and RDS (an artist) staying in Venice and seeing a ghost. They start at a little school for girls only (previously their mother had home-taught them). The plan is for Ally to become a doctor. She models for Aubery and is photographed by him.

Elizabeth is moralistic, wearing jumpers rather than lighting fires. When Ally collapses - an attack of nerves? - her mother is angry. Religious texts and domestic chores are prescribed by the doctor. Alfred is more fun. Aubery is more fun still.

Elizabeth campaigns against laws in France (and later England) which penalizes whores (and single women out at night) while letting their clients off. She asks May to act as bait, so she can collect evidence. Amy refuses.

Amy goes to a Scottish island to be a midwife. Ally go to London to become a doctor, staying with aunt Mary, whose way of bringing up George and her other children shocks Ally. Amy dies at sea. Ally becomes a surgeon. George wants to be an engineer rather than going to Cambridge. He invites Tom, a light-house designer, to the house. Amy works at the London Women's Asylum. When patients die because of operations, she wonders if it's for the best, saving later suffering. She wonders how much the state of mind affects physical health and decides to work in an asylum. She and Tom marry. Her mother's disappointed that she's sacrificing her career.

Chapters are begun with entries about paintings (by Alfred and others), plus a description. Perhaps the most significant narrational feature is that the set-pieces are generally not dealt with in the present, if at all.

"Summerwater" by Sarah Moss

An audio book

Several couples and families are staying in log cabins at a holiday camp by a loch. Some have rented for a fortnight, others own their places. It rains all day. Chapters from a character's PoV (first or third person) are separated by short sections from the PoV of nature - a deer with a fawn afraid of wolves, etc. The character's thoughts wander. They watch each other through windows. One is an obsessive jogger. She's not had sex with her husband for 2 or 3 weeks and thinks perhaps she should - it's like oiling a bike chain: it may not be much fun, but it stops things falling off. She might have a dodgy heart. A teenage girl has flirted with suicide - a friend of hers was hospitalised. A girl wonders which sense she can make people distrust - touch, if she mentions fleas; sight if it's dark

The different characters sometimes live in the same cabin so we see events/characters from 2 viewpoints. In a restricted environment away from home comforts, the characters have thoughts in common -

• Mobile reception is poor and WiFi's only available at the pub.
• There was loud music from a cabin the night before from Rumanians or something, which angers several of the characters.
• They should go abroad more, where it rains less
• Toilets aren't very private
• Gender/family roles become more obvious

In the final short interlude we revisit the aspects of nature previously covered - badgers, deer, ant-hills, etc - noting how they respond to noise. When, in the final chapter, one or two people go over to the cabin of supposed foreigners who are having a party, a fire soon breaks out. There's interaction between the guests which has been largely missing before. The jogger goes to the pub to call 999, but too late - it seems that there are deaths. Arson? the music stops.

I didn't find the daydreaming boring - the sections were sufficiently short, and there was just about enough variety of character. But equally, I wasn't knocked out.

Other reviews

• Melissa Harrison (Moss’s ability to conjure up the fleeting and sometimes agonised tenderness of family life is unmatched ... Observing the way we subtly edit ourselves and one another – the limits that puts on us, as well as the strengths it creates – is Moss’s metier.)
• Dana Hansen (The final paragraph of Summerwater is one of the most chilling in recent memory, pointing to the devastating consequences of bigotry and hatred, and to the undeniable mastery of Moss’s storytelling.)