Customer Reviews

Moon Tide: A Novel

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

From the opening pages of Moon Tide, the reader senses an intensity of mood for each character we meet that ultimately mirrors the build-up of the Hurricane. The lyrical prose captures beautifully the lives and passions of each character and draws the reader in to what becomes a powerful story. As the book unfolds, one of the great joys for me was discovering the suprises that you did not expect, especially in relation to Eve and Maggie. I could not have predicted any of it and loved the book more because of that. Throughout the book, I found myself reading passages again and again for their beauty but then rushing on to find out what happened next. By the end of Moon Tide, each of the characters we have come to know makes a decision that reflects the path they have been on throughout their lives. Only at the end does it all tie together, making this reader want the next door to open and the story to go on.

This book should appeal to a wide variety of audiences, not just to the female and literary audiences its marketing has targetted. Anyone who appreciates fully fleshed out and wonderfully diverse characters, thrashing through the complexities of lived lives in a real place (Westport, Mass.) and a real time (from near the end of World War I through the devastating hurricane of 1938), should love this book -- as will anyone who treasures thick description; reading this book you will come to smell and taste the air and the water and the sand and the mud where the characters spend time eeling, fishing, gardening, reading, and otherwise living their lives. But these are not small lives, for they are caught up in a larger set of cultural and economic changes, and then, ultimately in the leveling ferocity of the weather brought in by the 1938 hurricane. This book has been out less than a week and already in some places it has sold out on the basis of word of mouth; so you can take their word, and not just mine, that this is a great read.

What a delight to have Moon Tide grace the bookshelves right in time for summer vacation reading! Tripp's poetic language, well-drawn imagery, and lush metaphors are captivating. How lovely to be transported into the lives of this very small, yet diverse, seaside community. This is a haunting tale of longing, loss, and dreams. Where the memories of past landscapes haunt, where the town becomes a conglomeration of year-rounders versus summer people, where nature, in the form of the Hurricane of '38, defies all. An intelligent, beautiful, and engaging read!

"Moon Tide" is an ambitious and complex first novel.
The story describes fifty years of relationships among the year rounders and summer dwellers in the coastal town of Westport, Ma., culminating with the killer hurricaine of 1938. All of this is really besides the point, for the heart of the book is in the prose, poetry really, that the author sets down with richness and sensuousness that is rare in a young writer. Each sentence is meant to be taken in, chewed and ingested for its own content and beauty. As it is poetry, the tale itself unfolds slowly, the facts of the story subservient to the panorama of the land and sea, and the motion of the plot secondary to the loving description of the coast where it takes place.
This is a serious book, which leaves us hoping for more good literary news in future works.

This is a brilliant first novel. The writing is so careful, so confident and so far above the level to be found in most books today I had a hard time believing this was a debut. But what really won me over was the extraordinary ability the author has in translating the history and specificity of Wesport and the surrounding area. From the curtained rooms of Skirdah, the large summer house at the center of the book, to the backyard clothesline of a working class family, Tripp gets inside these places and the people she has live there and conveys them with grace and authority on the page. As well, the research she as done on the Hurricaine of 1938 is stunning. She brings to life one of the worst natural disasters of the last century with terrific skill and detail. All in all, this novel has everything one could want from a serious work of fiction: gorgeous writing, fascinating characters, a view into a little known world, and a gripping tale that keeps you flipping the pages until the very end.

This is a wonderful, rich and descriptive novel. The focus on locale really makes the reader know this small seacoast town as if he had tread those paths personally. Like a childhood memory; we know the shortcut to where the fishing is best and who is doing what to whom.

This story crescendos in tune with nature's fury.

Great book!

This book is not a quick summer read to pick up while watching your children at the beach. It requires focus and a willingness to be intimate with the writer's imagination. And boy is there a payoff! If you are willing to relax and go with the author, you'll be waiting as I am for her next book to come out. She captures the mythical nature of Westport Point with an ethereal net.

This book is not a quick summer read to pick up while watching your children at the beach. It requires focus and a willingness to be intimate with the writer's imagination. And boy is there a payoff! If you are willing to relax and go with the author, you'll be waiting as I am for her next book to come out. She captures the mythical nature of Westport Point with an ethereal net.

This is an extraordinary work of modern fiction. Reminds me of Pat Conroy's deep and well crafted writing style. Parts of it make one work through the imagery - a far and welcome contrast to the prose pumped out by most modern writers of fiction.

This work is lyrical and poetic. An entertaining read and an uplifting intellectual experience.

Highly recommended.

I found that after reading this book I could not forget about it for many days. It got into my being in a very powerful way and I was deeply moved by the beauty and mystery I felt as I immersed myself in these characters and incredible descriptions of the landscape of this New England coastal town. I look forward to more stories from Dawn Clifton Tripp as this was certainly a treasure and a book that I look forward to reading a second time.