Tideland - Softcover

Mitch Cullin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0297829491 ISBN 13: 9780297829492

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003

Synopsis

Moving from Los Angeles to rural Texas with her junkie father after her mother's death, Jeliza-Rose drifts from the harsh reality of her childhood into a new life. Escaping into the fantasies of her own over-active imagination she discovers fireflies with names, bog men who awaken at dusk, and monster sharks swimming down railroad tracks. Her collection of disembodied Barbie heads share in her adventures along with her real friend Dickens.

In the tradition of such cult classics as Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory and Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and playfully recalling Alice in Wonderland, Tideland is a brilliantly dark and ingenious creation.

Set in a landscape populated with singular characters and stark imagery, Tideland illuminates those moments when the fantastic emerges from seemingly common occurrences and lives - and a lonely child discovers magic and danger behind even the most mundane of events.

About this title

About the Author:

Mitch Cullin is 33, he lives in Tucson, Arizona and has had his fiction published in various periodicals (Christopher Street, Santa Fe Literary Review etc) and has also been awarded the Stony Brook Short Fiction Award as well as various writing grants and scholarships.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Cullin returns to the rural Texas landscape of his Whompyjawed (1999) and Branches (p. 5), in a narrative that veers unevenly between mordant humor and a self-conscious quirkiness that too often undercuts his real gift for language and invention.The precocious and preternaturally observant adolescent narrator, Jeliza-Rose, is a classic American literary type reminiscent of Harper Lee's Scout and Carson McCullers's Frankie. After her mother dies of a drug overdose, Jeliza-Rose and her father move from Los Angeles to Texas, returning to What Rocks, the farm that belonged to her late grandmother. Her father, Noah-also a former junkie-is a gifted guitarist and songwriter who dreams of moving to Denmark. Why Denmark? Like much else here, the reason seems rooted less in a coherent narrative structure than in authorial whimsy. Nothing particularly pressing keeps father and daughter living at What Rocks, other than a lack of money and of will to go anywhere else. Jeliza-Rose is left to fend for herself, and, like children everywhere, she has a prodigious imagination that keeps her continually diverted while her neglectful father lapses into a terminal dreaminess. She befriends a lonely scarecrow of a man called Dickens, an eccentric woman, Dell, who likes to wander around wearing a beekeeper's protective mask, and a stuttering boy named Patrick. Jeliza-Rose also calls on a large collection of Barbie dolls for amusement. Cullin has a wonderful feel for the big and wide Texas landscape that Jeliza-Rose finds herself in. His descriptions of how a child can happily lose herself in the long grass, wildflowers, and mesquite are lyrical without being precious.There's not much of a story for Cullin to hang his sharply drawn, often poignant evocation of childhood on. Still, his feel for the painful awkwardness and sensitivity of adolescence is worth the trip. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0297829491
• ISBN 13: 9780297829492
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192