Customer Reviews

The Tides

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2 star:		(3)
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A haunted nursing home -- not the sort of thing I'd have picked up on sight, but I loved the three other books I've read by Melanie that I was willing to try anything. As one of the blurbs states, she is unequalled in the realm of familial horror.

It's a disappointment -- and a surprise -- that this novel is dull for the most part. Occasional hauntings permeate the book, but most of the story is concerned with the mundane lives of the home's inhabitants. If you're interested in that sort of thing, maybe you'll like this book more than I did. The pace doesn't change until the end, a sudden and inexplicable conclusion that doesn't satisfy on any level. THE TIDES lacks the gripping psychological drama of PRODIGAL or the imaginative reinvention of horror standards of WILDING. Let's hope her next novel is up to par.

This is much more than a simple ghost story... Is Faye a woman or a demon? Why is she coming back to destroy everyone at the secluded Tides? You'll have to find for yourself, but be warned, this little book won't let you go till the nerve-shattering climax, and then it'll come back in your dreams, again and again and again...

A series of sinister accidents occurs at The Tides, a nursing home where Rebecca Emig is both administrator and the daughter of one of the patients. Are the visions of Rebecca's father, Marshall, real or senile delusions? Are they linked to these accidents? And how will they change Rebecca's life and that of every resident of the home? Melanie Tem has been around for a long time. She's the winner of the Bram Stoker Award, wife to Steve Rasnick Tem, himself a very well-respected writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and she knows her craft. She writes a good, tight narrative in which nothing is wasted and every detail tells a larger story. And those details are blunt; this story, while not gory, is not for readers with delicate sensibilities. The subject matter - residents of a nursing home, mostly elderly, many suffering senile dementia - is something I find hard to deal with for personal reasons, but if that were not the case, I suspect I would still find it all very disturbing. Tem has done her time in social work, and the details here ring true. She is writing what she knows, and this gives the book a firm underpinning of truth. Perhaps that's the most disturbing element of all. If this were simply a wild and wooly horror novel, it would be easy to forget.

As it is, this book will stay with you long after the storyline has ceased to creep you out. There is an almost unpleasant vividness to the characters which makes each twist all the more horrifying. This isn't about Freddie or Jason or any boogeyman, this is about what happens inside our heads when reality slips. And it's about the things that are, perhaps, just waiting on the sidelines for that moment. It's a well-balanced story about a man who has never forgotten or ceased to love his first wife, a selfish woman who married, had a child and then deserted her family. Even if the horror were only in Marshall Emig's mind, there is a terrible inevitability to the truths that are coming to the surface now that his defenses are being destroyed by age. Rebecca does not know that Billie, her father's second wife, is not her biological mother. She doesn't know that Marshall was ever married to a woman named Faye, and she certainly doesn't know the story behind that marriage. This would be horror enough for some people, and when Tem offers this plot as a layer in the larger story, the effect is both sad and shocking.

As with most horror novels, telling too much spoils the suspense, so let me just say that if you like good, tight horror, rising tension and some good, old-fashioned creepiness in what is to my way of thinking one of the most humane narratives I've ever encountered in this genre, then "The Tides" is a book you will want to read.

Reading what the book was about and having read several books by Melanie Tem, I picked this one up.

A haunted nursing home. I had never read a novel with this premise before. The whole idea of a haunted nursing home has so much potential. Potential Tem just did not tap into.

Let me begin by saying I have worked in nursing homes as a nurses' aide, then as a nurse, both an L.P.N. and an R.N. All were brief stints but enough to be able to tell you Tem did really nail to day-to-day goings on in a nursing home along with the atmosphere.

The first thing I had a problem with was the main character's supposed love of her job, yet her seemingly blasé attitude towards the problems The Tides had along with some of the pretty horrific occurences there.

I also felt that the main character was the least developed of all the character in The Tides.

Who are what Faye was is never really suitably addressed either. Why is Faye like this? What's her purpose? Why is Faye suddenly doing everything she is? How did Faye actually die and did her manner of death have anything to do with her action?

Even with these issues I still found the story holding my attention. Until the end.

The ending seems so forced, quick and just very unsatisfying, as if Tem reached that point and simply had no idea how to end it. Or Tem was rushed and under pressure from her agent and her editor to turn in the manuscript so she zipped off an ending. And a poor, unfulfilling one at that.

It concludes in just a few pages. It doesn't even make sense.

The reader is also left wondering what will become of The Tides now that Faye is no longer an issue. What will happen to the residents? What about the main character and her parents?

I'm glad I bought it used for a mere cent. If I'd paid full price, I would have truly felt ripped off.

Rebecca is the new administrator at The Tides nursing home. She is in way over her head (no pun intended) as she is too young and inexperienced to run the home. Also, her father Marshall is a patient there and he is being haunted by his ex-wife, Faye, who cases massive mayhem among the patients at the home resulting in deaths, etc., etc. If Faye a ghost? A demon? A powerful manifestation of Marshall's memory? Actually, I am not completely sure. That is never really explained. Also never really explained is what the drained lake behind the nursing home has to do with Faye, or anything else for that matter. I could be suddenly stupid or something, but I am not totally sure exactly what happened in this book, even after I read it. Don't get me wrong. The book was fairly entertaining and a fast read, but afterwards I was thinking, "huh?" Not up to Melanie Tem's usual standards.

The cover of this book is a marketing mistake - the eerie yellowish green with the foreboding building in the foggy background (which, by the way is not even close to the description of the building in the novel) denotes a cheesy horror treat, the kind that are great for summers in a rented beach cottage or passing along to your teenage kids. This one came to me used and I opened it to realize it actually had a plot and storyline which was not pockmarked every ten pages by a gruesome murder. It had real promise. It's a shame it was so difficult to get through. However it was also not marketed as a ghost story and a rather intellectual one at that which may be the problem with the book. Even the author can't figure out which audience to target. The story of a nursing home administrator, her hospitalized father, and her (perhaps, perhaps not) long dead mother returning to claim her baby had the beginnings of a solid story but the writing is abrupt and sometimes without segue, leaving the reader lost and requiring a recap. The character of the heroine - Rebecca - seems as if she needs a good slap to wake her up from her disorganization and lack of any personal life. It was hard for me to actually like her and root for her as she seemed insipid and boring. The more interesting characters are the patients and residents of The Tides and I wish the author would have given us more backstory on them - in fact they would have made a wonderfully creepy book. The ending fell completely flat and left me wanting more. The plot is resolved yet we never figure oout what happenes to the characters. The Tides started coming in strong and never quite made the grade for me.