Sara Freeman is a Montreal-born writer currently based out of Boston. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Fiction in 2013. At Columbia, she won the Henfield Prize for the best piece of short fiction by a graduate student. Her work has previously been published in a number of literary magazines.
A Gold Winner in Literary Fiction for the 2022 Foreword INDIES A
Gold Medalist in Literary Fiction for the 2023 Independent
Publisher Book AwardsA Best Book of the Year from TIME"Sara Freeman
constructs a portrait of a woman broken by loss to reveal an aching
and emotional narrative, told in clear and piercing prose." --
TIME's Best Books of 2022"Freeman hammers her paragraphs down into
perfected, indivisible units... A poignant evocation of a woman
adrift in the wake of tragedy." -- The Guardian"Tides is concerned
with what is intentionally hidden, flickering or muddied, waiting
to be excavated . . . As the story unfolds in short sections
sometimes only a sentence long (calling to mind Jenny Offill's
'Dept. of Speculation' and 'Weather') what's most hypnotic is
what's revealed beneath the waves of language: the impossibility of
leaving one's past behind . . . Just as the tides are something we
can count on, our life events are imprinted inside of us,
fossilized and imperfect shells swirling with their own kind of
broken beauty."--Boston Globe
"A beautiful portrait of a woman unmoored--and the connections that
bring her back." -- Literary Hub"Prepare to get deeply involved in
this stunning debut novel about grief and loss....) As Tides'
heroine begins to come out of her shell--thanks in part to a new
friend's kindness--the story shifts from an unforgettable portrait
of bereavement and emptiness to one of human connection and hope."
-- Apple Books, Best Books of January"The beauty of Freeman's prose
lies as much in this unexpected cadence as in the contrast between
beauty and harshness tucked into every page... In its poetic
unfolding, Tides reveals itself to be a stunning and revelatory
tale of the dissolution of one woman's life, her unexpected ties to
the sea, and the many ways present selves are tied to their pasts
... In this stunning debut novel, a woman's life unravels, builds
and unravels again across a series of sparse and staggering
vignettes." -Kerry McHugh, Shelf Awareness"Tides is a brief novel,
told in intense, concentrated scenes, some no longer than a
sentence . . . The brittle shards of story conceal great emotion;
if Mara let down her guard, you think, the pain would drown her . .
. touching but not depressing, bleak but also beautiful." --
Minneapolis Star Tribune"[S]tarkly beautiful." -- WBUR"TIDES is a
slim novel, but its structure encourages slow and reflective
reading....[S]trangely hopeful and beautiful." --
Bookreporter"Mercurial.... Freeman's prose is taut and
illuminating, a style that manages to be both detached and
emotionally devastating... A powerful intelligence underpins this
work, which concerns itself with familiar subjects of loss, legacy
and love. So accomplished is Freeman's interrogation of these
matters that it is hard to believe it is her first book... [a]
beautifully observed, elegantly written debut... Bleak but
beautiful, a life understood instead of under siege." -- The Irish
Times"As well as being beautifully atmospheric, Tides is an
intriguing exploration of the effect of sheer propinquity on
romance." -- Financial Times"Taut and affecting, Tides proceeds in
fragments... The reader proceeds as if scanning a littered
foreshore in the wake of high tide, uncertain as to whether the
next object will be alluring, lurid, or both... the overall effect
is quietly seductive. We are drawn frictionlessly into Mara's
psyche, and then made to stay there." -- Times Literary Supplement
(UK)"Tides' fragmented chapters gleam like pearls strung on a
powerful narrative of grief and survival, some only a line or so
long, a page given to each... This is a beautifully crafted story
of a women learning to live again." -- Fanny Blake, Daily Mail"Done
with plausibility and complexity... Not the least interesting
element is Freeman's use of repetition compulsion as a device; that
is, a traumatised person's need to obsessively reenact a defining
event. I last saw itused as effectively as this in Tom McCarthy's
2005 novel Remainder." -- The Critic"Charismatic... With an
intricate narrative and in deceptively simple language, Freeman
captures the full extent of loss. Complicated and enchanting, this
prismatic examination of emotional endurance is a winner"
--Publishers Weekly, starred review"[B]eautiful and translucent.
Mirroring the ebb and flow of water, short paragraphs leave lots of
empty spaces on the page, enhancing the emotional gut punches
latent in the text, while moments of heightened action run
uninterrupted."--Booklist, starred review"Freeman's novel reads
like a shattered mirror gradually being pieced together, though the
reflection, as in real life, never comes perfectly clear. . . .
What is left is a portrait of a woman's psyche pared to the core,
to unsettling effect. . . . An intense and lyrical debut."
--Kirkus"Mara's story is cleverly told through an expressive inner
monologue." -- Woman's Weekly"TIDES by Sara Freeman is
irresistible. A quiet tale of a woman adrift, who is fleeing her
past and trying to lose herself in a small seaside town. I read it
in an afternoon but I'll be thinking about it for a long time." --
Douglas Stuart"Brilliant, elegant, and unsparing. Tides is a
lyrical meditation on selfhood: Sara Freeman illuminates, with a
poet's eye, the shifting interior landscape of a woman adrift."
--Emma Cline "Tides is a perfect jewel of a novel. Haunting,
moving, powerful yet spare. It sticks to your guts in ways you
never expected. I loved it." -- Miranda Cowley Heller"Sara Freeman
is such a gifted writer, and she maps with great beauty and
precision the territory of loss. This novel is lovely, dark,
troubling, and deep." --Alix Ohlin"Sara Freeman goes about her
business in Tides with such cool composure that I didn't fully
register the serious heat of the thing until my eyebrows had
started to sizzle. I'm amazed that this is a first novel. There is
something very large to be found in this wonderfully compressed
work." --Laird Hunt"I read Tides in two voracious sittings,
thrilled by the push-pull of Sara Freeman's prose: the
tightly-controlled surface lyricism barely containing the violent
upheaval beneath. Freeman inhabits the mind of her nearly-unhinged
narrator so fully that the reader comes to understand -- and even
identify with -- the sometimes twisted logic of grief and unmet
longing. Who are we, as women, apart from the ones we love, or try
to love? A beautiful, painfully prescient debut from a wildly
talented new writer." --Jamie Quatro "Body and soul, heart and
mind, spirit and ground: in this astonishingly moving, taut debut,
Sara Freeman gives us a woman on the edge of her own emotional
survival. A thrilling, visceral story of grief and renewal."
--Stacey D'Erasmo, author of Wonderland "To read Sara Freeman's
Tides is to witness the stunning aftermath of an intimate
disturbance--a wave glowing in the dark. As readers we watch the
exquisite beauty of its surface and are plunged inside its
startling depths. Freeman reminds us of the grandeur and terror of
being alive with others in whose company we might luminesce."
--Jennifer Tseng "A tale of internal exile, of a woman on the lam
from her own loved ones and from the memories that cage her. Tides
is a marvel -- lyrical and suspenseful at the same time."
--Jonathan Dee "An irresistible debut novel about one woman's
several loves. Sara Freeman writes wonderful sentences, wavy and
surprising and full of sensations." --Christine Schutt"One of the
most carefully written, brave, honest, devastating books I've read
for a long time. There were lines in it so emotionally accurate and
merciless they made me squint up my eyes. It's explosive. But the
effect is the inside-your-body, barely-heard-properly percussive
receipt of a detonation felt at a distance" --Cynan Jones"Sara
Freeman goes about her business in Tides with such cool composure
that I didn't fully register the serious heat of the thing until my
eyebrows had started to sizzle. I'm amazed that this is a first
novel. There is something very large to be found in this
wonderfully compressed work." --Laird Hunt"Delicate,
unconventional, contemporary--Tides is a novel held together by
electricity, like a storm that just won't break." --Padma
Viswanathan"A compulsive read -- this story and its characters
seeped into me, so that I often thought of them between spells of
reading. Freeman's voice has a salt to it that feels both evocative
of and independent from the sea-streaked setting. The main
character has venom, but she seems more self-stinging than
anything, which only adds to the story's unsettling allure. From
the crystalline prose to the plot's syncopated rhythm, Tides is an
incisive, memorable debut." --Eliza Robertson
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