Review by Stacey O’Carroll
Author: Sarah Sasson
Publisher: Affirm Press
RRP: $32.99
Release Date: 30 January 2024
“In the time that followed, bits of ourselves kept breaking off, crumbling like limestone into ocean, apostles falling: every year we became a little less of whoever we were in those moments.”
Do we really know the people in our family? Can you ever really know a person beyond what you see? Sarah Sasson’s stunning debut novel Tidelines delves into these questions as we follow Grub come of age and discover that her parents and brother are fallible humans. Set across Sydney’s north shore and inner city, Sasson’s novel is an immersive swim into the pain of grief and how our perceptions of family can shift as we age.
“The house was an elderly relative that every year appeared more shrunken and with another piece missing.”
Teenage Grub idolises her adventurous father and her classical musician older brother Ethan. However, she feels like the underdog in the family and that she can never live up to her brother’s musical genius in her mother’s eyes. In her early twenties, struggling with relationships and finding her place in the adult world, she sees her family cracks and the sandstone of their upper-middle-class existence begin to crumble. When her beloved brother goes missing, the façade cracks and roles shift. While providing support for her father, Grub must sift through her brother’s past to understand and find him.
“When I tried to visualise your face it eluded me. I couldn’t recreate you. I only saw your peripheries, the curls of your hair, the nape of your neck, the mole on the rise of your right cheek.”
Novels on grief seem to be pulled in my direction like the sea tides to the shore. However, Sasson’s heartbreaking story and characters will linger long after the cover is closed. Her beautiful and evocative descriptions of Sydney are captivating and, as a local, bring the real locations off the page in stunning vividness. The pristine leafy, coastal landscape soon contrasts with the messy lives living within. So vivid are her descriptions that the reader will be placed right in the bushfire scene, smelling the bitter smoke of the fire and grief that will soon rip through the pages and the protagonist’s heart.
“Elijah’s absence had the same pain as a phantom limb.”
Sasson’s medical research and knowledge add poignant detail to the characters’ mental health. The characters’ suffering is nuanced and shows the lengths individuals can go to try and cover up their pain. Ultimately a story about a sibling’s love for her brother; Tidelines is a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale. Watching those we love deteriorate and being unable to stop the process is a painful and fraught experience.
“It would take years for me to unlearn the things those girls said to me, to pick them out like bindi-eyes from where they lodged under my skin.”
Grub is a relatable protagonist who starts to see herself as a separate individual from the child others perceive her to be. Sasson’s protagonist is intelligent, flawed and swept up into the tide of grief. When she sees life through adult eyes, Grub finally realises that the picture-perfect family she once thought she belonged to is barnacled. Our worldview as children situates our family members as set personalities, but like all things in life, we view people through our own perception. Grief is a wild rip that can pull you under or tumble you around so that the world you thought you knew may not be the same. It strips away the calm surface and reveals a messy, choppy undercurrent of real life.
“I thought of Elijah less as a person and more as a spectre, as if his flesh had turned into pixels: the grainy tones of the low-res security camera.”
Tidelines will pull you into the novel’s tide and linger with you long after the last page, leaving you asking if we can ever really know what is going on under the surface of those closest to us. Grief pulls you in and drags you along regardless of how hard you fight to pull yourself out of it. Tidelines is a wonderful debut novel that weaves the author’s medical and scientific knowledge with poetic prose and complex, flawed characters. Sasson is an author to watch.