Book Club - Sarah Sasson’s Tidelines

Today I’m bringing you a debut novel. It’s called Tidelines and it’s by Sarah Sasson. Sarah Sasson is an Australian physician and writer. Her poetry, short stories and non-fiction have been published in Australia, the United Kingdom and USA.  On a suburban street in the south of Sydney Grub waits in her car. In the house opposite lives the man who was her brother’s best friend. Grub is there to confront him. To finally wring from him the confession that her family’s life would have been better if he’d never entered it. Grub is still mourning for all her family has lost. Each of their lives seemed untouchable and now she struggles to recognise the happy family of her teenage years. Unfolding across the years of their adolescence, Tidelines is the story of Grub and her family. Of her bond with her brother, and the different directions their lives took.   ---- I read Tidelines over the summer and there is a lot about this book that screams ‘beach read’. From the atmospheric cover featuring a figure suspended, afloat in water, to the opening chapters; alive with the saltwater promise of Grub and her brother enjoying the dwindling days of a teenage summer in the early 2000’s. Tidelines is that glorious afternoon at the beach, but it is also the early evening when you realize you didn’t wear enough sunscreen.  I don’t love that analogy but I’m hoping it conveys the sense that this book wants to complicate simple enjoyment and show us a world full of complicated motivations and far reaching consequences. The book begins in a Sydney summer ringed by heat and fire. The ever present danger is backdrop to the siblings exploring their world and pushing into that space between adolescence and adulthood. Grub is in awe of her brother Elijah and this sheen of talent and cool carries them both into new experiences. Compared to Elijah’s seeming effortless ability to turn his hand to anything, Grub feels adrift. As they grow Grub will harness her talents and turn to medicine and Elijah to art but always they will have each others back. It’s here that the story turns and Grub must reconcile her youth and her ideal vision of her family as their world threatens to crash down around them. The power in this novel lies in the struggle between the ideal that we all want to occupy and the reality that too often overcomes us. Grub is confronted with a world that perhaps was hidden, perhaps she had chosen to ignore. In discovering her brother’s struggles with his mental health, she must reevaluate the life she had thought they had enjoyed. Tidelines is a nuanced exploration of grief and loss shown over a young life. It’s never enough to look for simple answers when things fall apart and Grub must come to terms with her whole life if she is going to make peace with how her present seems so chaotic. I appreciated that this book looked unflinchingly into the dark corners of Grubs world and showed us how this could be so many of our lives. It’s a book to read critically and one to allow to sink in, even as you appreciate the storytelling of this tremendous new author. Sarah Sasson joined me on Final Draft and you can look out for that interview on the podcast.