It’s that time of year when I have to catch up on reviews (one of these books I read back in April!) –

The Swift Dark Tide by Katia Ariel

What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman? Katia Ariel’s memoir chronicles her journey of change, discovering her needs, and examining her role as a mother and as a partner. She charts the history of her relationships, as well as that of her family’s, which has it’s roots in the Black Sea town of Odessa.

I found Ariel’s writing quite beautiful, her observations presented as vignettes.

…you and I looked out at the sea. The tide was coming in. The water had gone dark and spangly, an indigo nightclub floor.

I think an important part of her story is that her and her husband had had an open marriage (or rather, they had explored the boundaries), so therefore, in some senses this wasn’t completely new. It’s also relevant given that children were involved, and I note that because I’m aware of judgement directed at the author. Yes, changes to family structure are difficult but ultimately it is far more damaging for children to be living with parents who are concealing something – children are hardwired to observe parents and if they know something is up but don’t have the information, they’ll fill in the gaps (using their wild imaginations!). I applaud the author and her husband for their authenticity and, despite Ariel’s initial uncertainty about her circumstances, she writes with openness and honesty.

3/5

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

A character-driven story about a woman in her early twenties who falls in love with a man twenty years her senior, while holidaying in the small coastal town where he lives.

I’m always going to seek out stories where the sea is given top billing, and in this sense, Thirst for Salt didn’t disappoint. I was immersed in Lucas’s descriptions of the water, tramping through the tea-tree brush to get to the beach, salt drying on skin, the sting of sunburn…

…I wanted to burn, water drying off my body in the heat – once my favourite vice. It felt good in the way a minor transgression can, like taking a drag of a cigarette or kissing a stranger. I liked the sting of it, standing under the cool needles of the outdoor shower at the end of the day, rinsing the sand from my feet. The freckles I’d had as a child, long dormant, appearing again on my arms and across the bridge of my nose.

But was I immersed in the relationship? No. Putting red flags aside (there’s obviously a power-imbalance here), there was something left unsaid about the male character, Jude, that felt lacking rather than mysterious, as may have been the intention. Essentially, when I dive into a character-driven story, I need a strong emotional plot-line, and unfortunately this fell short.

2.5/5

My Brother Jaz by Gideon Haigh

In January 2024, in a period of personal crisis, Gideon Haigh abruptly started writing the story of the night his seventeen-year-old brother, Jasper, was killed.

The sense of Jasper is always there, out of sight, but bulking darkly like a submerged continent.

Haigh has had a long career as a journalist and has written more than 50 books, and is known for his ‘…pronounced, and frankly unreasonable, aversion to autobiographical writings…‘. So, his frenzied 72 hours spent writing My Brother Jaz, was driven by something Haigh can’t quite identify, short of knowing it was time to acknowledge the impact of his brother’s death. The result is something raw and confronting.

The next day I give the eulogy at the funeral. It is my most public role in this sequence of events; many people afterwards will praise my courage and dignity; of it I have almost no memory at all. I have begun closing those windows into my soul that events had thrown open. Perhaps they had only been narrowly open before; pretty soon they will be shut altogether.

The first thing to note about Haigh’s experience of grief is that he did everything he could to avoid it. For many, many years, he could not touch his grief and, the longer that went on, the more difficult it became. He acknowledges that he masked his grieving with other things that may have appeared productive, such as work and his prolific publication schedule. But there were other indicators, including disordered eating and failing relationships.

You need not set out to kill yourself to do yourself in. You can run risks. You can abandon cares.

In all of my reading about grief, I seek the lines that describe it in a new way, knowing that one day, they will resonate deeply for someone. This is the line I’ll be sharing from Haigh –

The world of the bereaved is not merely sad but dangerous. It is full of cues, of snares, of jagged edges.

My only criticism? I wanted more.

4/5

Breakwater by Marijke Schermer

Prior to becoming a counsellor, I worked in hydrology (not enough space here to explain that career shift but it’s not as mad as it sounds!). Anyway, one thing that guided my work in hydrology was ‘water always wins’. As a counsellor, I don’t ever want to imply that trauma and grief ‘win’, but what I do know is that if you try to bury or ignore those things, they will eventually find their way out, and not always in a manner that a person would choose (see the review above!). These are things I had in mind as I read Breakwater.

For a novella, Breakwater is expertly constructed with unlikely, interwoven themes. The story focuses on Emilia – she’s a statistician, and the reader has the immediate impression that Emilia is curious and questioning but understands the world in terms of constructed patterns and norms. She has a caring husband, two young sons, and a house in the Dutch countryside, by a river (and not protected by a dyke).

…they tried to put into context the supposed certainty derived from the numbers, by demonstrating that opting for a particular model or way of defining a group had an important effect. By explaining that the normal distribution is not a natural phenomenon but a construct.

A cluster of events disrupts Emilia’s life – a foreboding weather forecast and rising water; an interaction with a friend that triggers a past trauma; and news of a colleague’s behaviour. As the story unfolds, there is an increasing sense of panic as Emilia makes erratic decisions, the river breaks its banks, and her husband demands explanations.

She needs to get back into the daily routine and once again forget what she’s resolved to forget.

The rising tension was brilliantly executed and, as mentioned, the use of statistics as a lens was clever (and not overdone). I also think Schermer has realistically and sensitively explored how trauma can be triggered and how difficult it is to put the ‘lid back on’ – the parallel between the trauma and the water invading Emilia’s home was excellent.

I received my copy of Breakwater from the publisher, World Editions, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3/5