I wasn’t aware of Sarah Moss’s work until I came across The Tidal Zone when browsing in a bookshop in London.  It’s an impressive, well-received novel that’s likely to tug at the heart strings of any parent.  Adam Goldschmidt lives in a town in the Midlands of England with his wife, an overworked and stressed family doctor.  Adam, an occasional and very part-time university teacher, is the primary carer for his two daughters, Miriam and Rose.  He does all the things a stay-at-home parent does – cooks the meals, washes the clothes, tidies the house, arranges the birthday parties – while his wife makes the money.  His is a good, solid, secure and predictable middle class life.  Secure and predictable until teenage Miriam collapses at school, her heart temporarily stopped by exercise-induced anaphylaxis.  That’s all I’m prepared to divulge about the plot.  This is a spoiler-free zone.

This is a story about the fragility of daily life, the thinness of the shell that protects our happiness and the suddenness with which that shell can be cracked.  It’s also an intensely English, state-of-the-nation novel, a sharp satire on everything from the National Health Service to gender politics.  Although by no means perfect, The Tidal Zone portrays family life acutely and brilliantly: its joys and terrors, its compromises and treasures.