The Tidal Zone – A Mesmerizingly Written Novel about Contemporary Parenthood

“Civilization, after all, survives on repression: probably all marriages, all families, require the silencing of words that, once spoken, could not be unsaid.”

Few pages into English writer Sarah Moss’ The Tidal Zone (published in 2016), I was thoroughly engrossed by the beauty of the author’s prose and the deeper truths it discloses. Moss brilliantly decodes human emotions in a way that immediately makes us recognize, understand, and empathize with the characters she has sketched. This is my first Sarah Moss novel and although the synopsis didn’t seem that interesting, I’m glad to have had the determination to give it a try. The Tidal Zone is an exploration of 21^st century family life and parenthood, which opens with a rather gloomy incident, pushing a middle-class English family to look beyond the drudgery and bliss of their domestic life. It sounds like something director Michael Haneke could make, even though Moss’ tender observations and intimate point-of-view narrative isn’t saddled with misanthropy.

Sarah Moss’ fifth novel unfurls from the perspective Adam Goldschmidt, a stay-at-home dad who does a bit of hourly-paid teaching at the local university. He also spends his free time researching on the postwar rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. However, Adam’s biggest joy is being the primary caregiver to his two lovely daughters: bookish and assertive 15-year-old Miriam and the precocious 8-year-old Rose. Adam is married to Emma, a workaholic GP with no talent for domestic duties, but greatly qualified to be the family’s sole breadwinner. There’s neither a sneering commentary on how children are affected when the parental roles are reversed nor unbridled scorn is reserved for the mom who ‘chooses’ career over children. Frustrations are expressed over Adam-Emma’s increasingly distant married life, sans the usual cliched message of motherhood.

What’s primarily interesting about The Tidal Zone is the inner monologue of an anxious Adam. He thinks (and worries) a lot, but like every one of us, he endlessly edits his inner flow of words to offer the allegedly prompt replies. As an unemployed PhD, Adam provides insights on range of themes: from post-World War II England to healthcare politics and the design of corporate housing estates. His insights about his family members are equally interesting, particularly his concern for his rebellious elder daughter, who says “patriarchy and hegemony and neoliberalism, several times a day”. And through his perceptions, we can discern the kind of person Adam is: a caring, generous, absurdly anxious, and an imperfect husband and dad. Adam’s existential malaise is stoked when Miriam, at school, goes into anaphylactic cardiac arrest. For some unknown reasons, Miriam heart has stopped. But thanks to CPR performed by a teacher and perfect timing of the paramedics, Miriam is saved.

Nevertheless, the family’s life and dynamics is transformed irrevocably. The sudden discernment of his daughter’s mortality evokes great fear within Adam. He has to face the hardships of the domestic life in the wake of this, while also enduring the fears about his children’s future. An incident from the past makes Adam wonder whether Miriam’s situation is genetic. But he curbs his anxieties and holds the family together. He still takes Rosie to school, who can’t easily fathom the reasons behind her sister slacking off at hospital, watching TV. He puts up with Emma, who approaches the crisis in a very GP-like manner (offering diagnosis rather than acknowledge the chasm of uncertainty). But we understand this is Emma’s coping mechanism. And although we might be far removed -- culturally or socially -- from the Goldschimdt family, the emotional unrest described here could be understood and easily related with. From capturing the boredom, desperation, and joys of family life to the silent horror of hospital environment, Sarah Moss’ has written a very 21^st century story with admirable clarity and depth.

The Tidal Zone, however, seems to fall a bit short of greatness since  I began to lose interest in the story in the middle-portions. I can understand that the novel is a character study and an exploration of contemporary English life. Yet the historical aspects of the novel (Coventry Church) and the story of Adam’s hippie father’s journey in chase of American dream weren’t as absorbing. It brings a sort of thematic depth to the tale, which I didn’t care for much (from an emotional viewpoint). The most intriguing aspect of the novel was Adam’s attempts to connect with Miriam, once after learning the fears and restrictions she has to put up with. These father-daughter conversations not only reach emotional depths without a bit of sentimentality, but also contain a fine dose of caustic wit (Miriam says, “If it happens again and I don’t survive, burn me, OK? It’s better for environment; there isn’t room for everyone to be buried”, to which Adam remarks, “It can’t be better for the environment. Burning requires energy and generates smoke. Burial’s just entropy.”) Moreover, everything about Adam and Miriam’s relationship is beautifully depicted; the father who is very proud of his daughter’s bold assertions even though he publicly plays the role of typical dad (“You can’t speak like that” he says to curtail her declamations). And you get the sense of how Miriam is both frustrated and moved by her father’s overwhelming attention. Overall, The Tidal Zone despite its minor structural flaws is a poignant and extraordinary novel about parental love.