Customer Reviews

Storm Tide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Storm Tide," by Marge Piercy and Ira Wood, starts out well. At first, it is an absorbing story of a small island in Massachusetts, where there are no secrets. The island is depicted lovingly as a place where people can live out their lives in a beautiful setting. As the narrative proceeds, the lives of the various residents of Saltash Island become intertwined. The main characters are David, a former baseball player who never lived up to his potential, and Judith, a married lawyer with whom David becomes romantically involved. Their relationship is threatened by Crystal, a scheming woman with a son who moves in (literally) on David and tries to take over his life. Complicating matters still further, David runs for political office on the island, which challenges the political machine set up years ago by the island's boss, Johnny Lynch. To their credit, Piercy and Wood try to make the characters three-dimensional. However, the authors throw too many complications into the story. They try to deal with the characters' ties to Judaism, their eroticism, their political involvement, and their family ties all at once. The plot becomes much too convoluted. By the end of the book, I was weary of all the machinations invented by the authors. Too much goes on at once to keep the narrative flowing smoothly. This is too bad, since the book began quite well and seemed to be heading in an interesting direction.

Read this now!! Piercy has always drawn powerful and interesting characters, especially those who grow out of the sixties spirit. The three around whom the story revolves are vivid, memorable, and, if not always loveable, certainly always compelling. The first person point of view of David's story gave an added intimacy to the relationship with his character, at least for this reader. The intrigue of the plot on both the personal and political levels was great! I love the way that Judiasm, food and respect for learning are woven into the plot. Now I will have to add Mr. Wood to my list of favorite authors, which has long been topped by his wife. Like many of her books, notably, for me, He, She and It and Vida, I couldn't decide whether to whip through in one or two sittings, or to savor for a while. Sadly, I really couldn't put it down, and wait eagerly for the next work, collaboration or otherwise. The notes about the art of collaboration at the end were also of great interest, and added to my appreciation of this terrific story.

I love Marge Piercy's books....I've read Braided Lives, Vida, Summer People, Gone to Soldiers and now this. It's not that it was all that disjointed which it was, it's that the story seemed to be something Mr. Wood and Ms. Piercy cooked up in their kitchen and forgot to let us in on the secret. I really disliked this book.

Once I started reading it, I had to pace myself to make it last a little longer. The characters are believable and engaging. The small town setting is very true to life. I especially enjoyed the technique of reading each of the principal characters perspectives in the form of separate chapters, with the main character being written in first person. It gives you the ability to really get into each of their heads. The only downside for me was what seems like an over reliance on sexual descriptions. Sex is important to the plot and a character motivating factor, but the emphasis on sex, for my personal tastes, bordered on gratuitous.

Beautifully and seamlessly written, the husband and wife team of Piercy and Wood have crafted an intelligent novel, which is both political thriller and mystery. The story is as erotic and seductive as the relationship between David, Judith and Crystal is. STORM TIDE is filled with strong images of religion and nature which play an important role to the story. Smart, clever and definitely a page-turner, STORM TIDE shouldn't be missed.

I have enjoyed several of Piercy's other works and I am always intrigued by the way she takes "odd" relationships, turns them around til you, the reader, see them differently--as optimal. While I enjoyed the whole dynamic, the character of Crystal was truly well drawn. Unfortunately, I have known women like Crystal, for whom drawing and binding a partner to you in a pathologic fashion was their conception of love. Intriguing and a great read.

I've read many Marge Piercy books, novels and poetry (and, in general, lean more toward the latter), and reread several as I prepared to do an interview with the author for the spring 2010 issue of The Smoking Poet. Her ability to produce is remarkable. At this writing, she has produced 17 novels and 17 collections of poetry, and her range in genre is equally awe-inspiring. Storm Tide, however, was the first I'd read in which Piercy collaborated with her husband, writer Ira Wood. I was most intrigued as I settled in for a good Sunday read. Would I be able to distinguish the two? Would their styles mesh or would the seams show?

The novel opens with a chapter called, "David." It is written in first person, and the character is a young man, a baseball player who didn't quite make it in the big leagues, and so seems a bit confused at this point about who he is, what are his other talents, how might he make himself useful in life. I assumed (correctly) that this was Wood writing. I had never read his work before, but by end of the first page, I determined I would. He opens:

"When the winter was over and my nightmares had passed, when someone else's mistakes had become the subject of local gossip, I set out for the island. I made my way in increments, although the town was all of eighteen miles square. To the bluff overlooking the tidal flats. Down the broken black road to the water's edge. To the bridge where her car was found, overturned like a turtle and buried in mud."

Introduced to David Greene, we then move to chapters titled Judith, and these are written by Piercy. Interestingly, these are not in first, but in third person, giving the reader perhaps more intimacy with David, more distance from Judith. And the story does seem to revolve more around David.

David is attracted to the older Judith Silver, a very strong and independent, intellectual woman, a lawyer married to Gordon Stone. Immediate comparisons come to mind to the autobiography I just read by Piercy, Sleeping with Cats, in which we learn that she was married when she met Wood, that her then husband condoned, even at times encouraged her affair with Wood, who seem to have more confused feelings on the issue. In my review of the autobiography, I pointed out that every work by an author is to some degree autobiographical, and so we see the similarities here, too. In fact, I found it especially interesting reading the two books side by side.

Back to the story: it is a weaving of several threads, coming together in this small Cape Cod town, where everyone knows everyone's business. We meet Johnny Lynch, a powerful local politician, corrupt and yet at times benevolent, entrenched in his place of leadership and not about to let go. Opposing his views on the town's welfare, Judith Silver and Gordon Stone nudge David into position to run for town selectman.

Adding intrigue and complexity to this scenario is the evolving affair between Judith and David, the quickly spreading cancer that ravages Gordon's body, the arrival of the pinup style young woman, Crystal, who plays sweet and sexy, but is deep-down damaged, using her feminine wiles to manipulate David. Crystal is driven by her need to have a man in her life, and she aims for David to fill that need. She has a young son, Laramie, whom she uses unabashedly to pull on his heart strings and tie him down with guilt trips and parental obligations. Whether because of his youth, or simply that he is too easily seduced and led around by his anatomy, David becomes perfectly entrenched in Crystal's honey-sweet trap. Seeing this Achilles' "heel" in his new political opponent, Johnny Lynch uses Crystal against David to the very end, and to disastrous results for all, even the young boy.

The book is a fast reader, a true page turner. The contrasts between characters are especially fascinating: Judith, the sharp and smart, mature woman--and Crystal, the loopy pinup girl with nothing to offer but her body (and riddled with jealousy over the older woman); David, the young baseball player turned politician with good intentions but capable of the most ghastly mistakes--and Gordon, the dying man who has been there, done that, and is ready to pass his wife along almost like so much property as he nears his final days. Indeed, that can be the most puzzling part. While Judith professes open relationships, she quickly enough withdraws her favor from David when he grows too involved with Crystal. She explains it away as somehow different when David protests that she, after all, is a married woman, but it is not convincing and difficult to follow her logic. Everybody wants to be first to someone. And then there's Johnny, an old letch when it all comes down to it, using Crystal at first for political strategies, but then deteriorating to being just one more horny old toad who wants a piece of that. Here, tragedy truly unfolds.

Not one of my favorite Piercy books, but all in all, in the top few. I enjoyed the interwoven stories and characters, the collaboration between two writers--including the interview with the two at end of the book. Their work blended seamlessly, two masters crafting their work into one, a shared success.

~Zinta Aistars for The Smoking Poet, Spring 2010 Issue