Thirst for Salt

 Thirst for Salt

Reviewed By  Grasshopper2       April 21, 2023

 

Author  Madelaine Lucas

Distributor:      Allan and Unwin
ISBN:                 9781761066931
Publisher:         Allen and Unwin
Release Date:   April 2023  

   Website:   https://www.allenandunwin.com

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Madeleine Lucas has a beautiful style of descriptive writing which engages the reader throughout the story, Thirst for Salt. “To recall the past is to unravel the tendrils of a bluebottle jellyfish, map the welts left on my back and throat that summer.” The story begins here with the simile of jellyfish scars like the pain and scars of a past love. The author’s thoughtful and perceptive writing explains characters and their behaviours with a gradual exposing of their soul.

The narrator whose name is not mentioned, tells her story with care. She has grown up with her mother and much later, a brother whom she loves dearly. She studied at University and after graduating goes on holiday with her mother to a place they visited many years before. It is while she is spending time at the beach, she meets Jude. He is forty-six and she twenty-eight. To retell the story does no justice to the depth of emotions laid bare, the love, the passion, and the fear of loss.

Eventually the narrator moves into Jude’s shack and spends a very happy time there. “Love I still believe, exists outside of time. Or it is its own time. It makes its own measures-not in minutes or hours or calendar days but in something closer to seasons, or tidal movements.” As we hear the narrator’s voice, we recognise the doubts she has about lasting love, having a child, and a permanent home.

Sadly, many of the doubts and concerns felt come to pass. Minor differences and jealousies gather to affect this relationship. The unwinding of this haunting story is as gritty as the sand and salt on their beach.

Fiction