Tideland - Softcover

Cullin, Mitch

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080231340X ISBN 13: 9780802313409

Publisher: Dufour Editions, 2006

Synopsis

A look at the world through the eyes of a wildly imaginative young girl in contemporary Texas.

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. TIDELAND is his first book to be published in the UK.

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: Dufour Editions
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 080231340X
• ISBN 13: 9780802313409
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 182