Tides

“Tides is a lyrical meditation on selfhood: Sara Freeman illuminates, with a poet’s eye, the shifting interior landscape of a woman adrift.”—Emma Cline

An intoxicating, compact debut novel, Tides is the story of a lost woman who walks out of her life and washes up in a seaside town by the winner of the Henfield Prize, Sara Freeman.

After a sudden, devastating loss, Mara flees her family and ends up adrift in a wealthy beach town with a dead cellphone and barely any money. Mired in her grief, Mara detaches from the outside world and spends her days of self-imposed exile scrounging for food and swimming in the night ocean. In her state of emotional extremis, the sea at the town’s edge is rendered bleak, luminous, implacable.

As her money runs out and tourist season comes to a close, Mara finds a job at the local wine store. There, she meets Simon, the shop’s soft-spoken, lonely owner. Confronted with the possibility of connection with Simon and the slow thawing of her desires and appetites, the facts of her flight begin to emerge.

With echoes of Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill, and Marguerite Duras, Tides is a spare, visceral debut novel about the nature of selfhood, intimacy, and the private narratives that shape our lives. A shattering and unforgettable debut.