Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Spring tides by Jacques Poulin
Review of 'Spring tides' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A beautiful cross between Richard Brautigan and, say, David Lynch. Spring Tides is a novel that insists you read sitting down. From it's allegorical setting to the way in which one of its characters touts decelerated reading, this is a difficult novel to discuss analytically because, like Lynch, it writes outwardly with its own critical theory. The effect on the reader is immediate. Short chapters ebb and flow with hypnotic rhythm lulling the reader into passivity.
I found myself fighting against an instinct to let the prose simply wash over me without a second thought. This is not only appropriate, it accounts for the scattered single star reviews from discouraged students assigned this text in a classroom who wanted more things to happen. If you try and lance this novel's story to excoriate its meaning it will be like poking a cotton ball.
For me, meaning came from an active …
A beautiful cross between Richard Brautigan and, say, David Lynch. Spring Tides is a novel that insists you read sitting down. From it's allegorical setting to the way in which one of its characters touts decelerated reading, this is a difficult novel to discuss analytically because, like Lynch, it writes outwardly with its own critical theory. The effect on the reader is immediate. Short chapters ebb and flow with hypnotic rhythm lulling the reader into passivity.
I found myself fighting against an instinct to let the prose simply wash over me without a second thought. This is not only appropriate, it accounts for the scattered single star reviews from discouraged students assigned this text in a classroom who wanted more things to happen. If you try and lance this novel's story to excoriate its meaning it will be like poking a cotton ball.
For me, meaning came from an active attendance to myself as a reader as each new chapter was announced. Indeed I even practiced decelerated reading myself. I bet I could have stretched this out far longer than a week but I'm still prodded by the procreant urge of the world and still learning how to slow down.
Recommended reading for a lazy spot in the sun.