Time and Tide
A Novel
ISBN10: 0374538816
ISBN13: 9780374538811
Trade Paperback
336 Pages
$17.00
CA$23.00
Time and Tide is a fragmented novel detailing the loves and catastrophes—and catastrophic loves—of Nell, an Irish woman trying to make a life for herself in the literary world of London.
"A whimsical beauty who has swapped the suffocating narrowness of her native land for the loveless brutality of England" (The Independent), Nell is in flight from bitter, controlling, and small-minded parents, yet risks becoming just such a mother to her own sons. She seeks comfort and acceptance, yet finds death, drugs, and "an orgy of humiliation" (The New York Times Book Review). She seeks companionship, yet finds one after another predatory man: sadists, alcoholics, unscrupulous doctors, and even child molesters. Can Nell extract from the "the vast inhospitality of a creaking world" some measure of beauty and grace? The answer, of course, is yes—but at the price of many illusions.
Reviews
Praise for Time and Tide
“As her disturbing novel clearly reveals, Edna O’Brien possesses what Henry James called an 'imagination for disaster' . . . [Time and Tide] is an anthology of heightened moments . . . never less than brilliantly expressed.”—Joel Conarroe, The New York Times Book Review
"O’Brien’s melodious, fluent prose is one of the sweetest pleasures of contemporary fiction, and Time and Tide displays her gift eloquently."—Robert Roper, Los Angeles Times
"Acclaimed Irish writer O'Brien . . . explores that 'great chasm' between mothers and would-be mothers, with smotheringly unrelieved lyricism."—Kirkus Reviews