Tide Running: A Novel [Hardcover]

Oonya Kempadoo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

A striking and sensuous novel set in the contemporary Caribbean, by one of fiction's bright new stars

On the island of Tobago, Cliff, a young man from the poor town of Plymouth, watches the arrival of a foreign couple and their child to a luxurious house overlooking the ocean. The couple invites Cliff into their home and lives, and a relationship develops that tests sexual boundaries while unexpectedly revealing the depth of their racial and cultural differences. Things begin to go wrong--money is missing, the couple’s car disappears. Feelings of suspicion and guilt arise, raising unsettling questions of wealth and responsibility, brilliantly portrayed against the lush backdrop of Tobago and the harsh, brittle world of Plymouth.

Oonya Kempadoo's second novel compellingly brings to life the characters of the contemporary Caribbean and captures the predicament of a young society looking to America for its fantasies and its heroes. Kempadoo’s language is utterly captivating, making her one of the most original writers of contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kempadoo's second novel (after Buxton Spice) is a sensuous, richly vernacular account of a young Tobagonian's intimate, ultimately disastrous intersection with a vacationing married couple. Cliff is a shy, aimless 20-year-old in the sleepy town of Plymouth on the Caribbean island of Tobago, whose fatherless family scrapes by on what his mother hustles from the "goods boat." As Cliff observes his friends falling into drugs and crime, he gravitates toward the charming openness of an interracial family with a vacation house nearby: Bella, a Trinidadian photographer; her husband, Peter, an English corporate lawyer who is white; and their small child, Oliver. Gradually Cliff becomes a friendly presence in Peter and Bella's airy, stunning home, and then much more as their three-way relationship deepens. But when Cliff begins to steal from the couple, the view of the limitless ocean-a constant presence in the novel-shrinks to the restricted prospect of a jail cell. Most of the novel is narrated in Cliff's heavy Tobagonian argot, challenging then mesmerizing, with stream-of-consciousness interjections by Bella. Kempadoo, sagely, does not condemn the rich outsiders for taking advantage of Cliff's disenfranchisement, but offers each character space for his or her own self-justification: Bella entertains "some na‹ve romance for [Cliff's] rootsy background"; Peter, older than his wife, tests his manliness against Cliff's in a mock-serious way; while Cliff remains an enigma, falling into criminality through a kind of "watch me nuh" boastfulness. Kempadoo's knowledge of the class-conscious ways and speech of the island people is deep and sensitive; her resistance to sentimentality imbues her narrative with moments of startling and incisive clarity.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

The heaving power of the tides and the rhythmic "swellin' " of the sea around the island of Tobago are the erotic and spiritual center of Kempadoo's second novel, the story of a ménage ˆ trois involving a beautiful Tobagan man and some recent arrivals-a wealthy mixed-race couple, recklessly "flirting with newness" in a place that still bears the historical scars of the slave trade. With a finely tuned ear for the cadences of the Caribbean, Kempadoo, the British-born child of Guyanese parents, examines the strange symbiosis between the newcomers, seduced by local color, and the impoverished islanders, hungry for consumer goods. As the trio's relationship presses to its disastrous conclusion, she succeeds in turning an unsettling tale into an exploration of the global politics of desire.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374277575
• ISBN-13: 978-0374277574
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,576,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous, evocative and profound, May 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tide Running: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel about a poor young Tobagon man and his encounter with a wealthy couple who draw him into their lives, blithely, without considering the consequences, is one of the best portrayals of contemporary Caribbean life I've ever read. Brilliant, sensual, and ultimately disturbing, Tide Running is, like Kempadoo's first novel, Buxton Spice, an exploration of the effects of class and wealth on a young nation trying to come into its own in the shadow of its wealthy neighbor to the north.

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovely rhythm, interesting slice of life, December 29, 2008

By 

Jessica Hazlewood (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tide Running (Bluestreak) (Paperback)

Tide Running was recommended to me by a friend last spring. At the end of my semester, I eagerly purchased a copy for a leisurely summer read, but found myself tearing through it at break-neck speed. In retrospect, I sense that part of what kept me reading was its wonderful sense of rhythm, both in its sentences, and in the narrative. I enjoyed the different perspectives gained in reading this book about a place I know little to nothing about, and enjoyed this introduction to a very talented writer. The story has stayed with me, and I sense I will be returning to this writer to dip into the lives of her other characters.

4.0 out of 5 stars Authentically Caribbean, January 13, 2006

By 

Art Love (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tide Running: A Novel (Hardcover)

With the realism of a documentary film maker,
Oonya Kempadoo chronicles the lives of two
economically challenged Tobagonian brothers ,
Cliff and Ossi. Fascination with a well off
couple living on the island , soon reels the
older of the two brothers , Cliff , into a
maze of sex , deceit and chaos.

The accurate dialect and vivid descriptions
used by the author , mentally transport the
reader to the tiny island of Tobago.