The central conflict of Tidelines is our narrator’s feelings towards her older brother, Elijah, whose glowing perfection she lives under. She is debilitated by her jealousy. She’s also got an almost incestuous attraction to him, evidenced through her keen observance of him: “The mole that sat on his right cheek directly under his eye moved up a fraction. That mark was one of my favourite things about him. Completely round and smooth, a drop of chocolate on his skin.“

While scuba diving together, she thinks: “In that moment Elijah belonged only to me.“

Anticipating the start of school, her concerns are thus: “Elijah was about to begin his final year. From tomorrow we would be separated by our sex and half a kilometre. Even though it wasn’t his fault, it felt like a betrayal.“

Is it jealousy or desire? Does she want to be him, or be with him? Sasson’s tone is passive and observational – Grub is not an active player in her own story. But the poignant tone of her reflections showcases a graceful style. She loves her nature metaphors: “Bits of ourselves kept breaking off, crumbling like limestone into the ocean, apostles falling: every year we became a little less of whoever we were in those moments.”

The book deftly charts the weariness of coming into an unexpected adulthood. The tragedy of childhood is that ultimately, we all have to grow up.

The death of her brother, at the novel’s core reminded me of W. S. Merwin’s flawless poem, Separation: ”Your absence has gone through me / Like thread through a needle./ Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

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