High Tide
SynopsisPlot
Told more or less in reverse chronological order, High Tide is the story of Ieva, her dead lover, her imprisoned husband, and the way their youthful decisions dramatically impacted the rest of their lives. Taking place over three decades, High Tide functions as a sort of psychological mystery, with the full scope of Ieva's personal situationand the relationship between the three main charactersonly becoming clear at the end of the novel. One of Latvia's most notable young writers, Abele is a fresh voice in European fictionher prose is direct, evocative, and exceptionally beautiful. The combination of strikingly lush descriptive writing with the precision with which she depicts the minds of her characters elevates this novel from a simple story of a love triangle into a fascinating, philosophical, haunting book.
Story
About this book
High Tide follows Ieva, a Latvian woman whose life has been shaped by the choices she and two men close to her made when they were young. One of those men is dead, the other is in prison, and the novel traces backwards through time to show how the three arrived at these outcomes. The story spans roughly three decades, moving in reverse chronological order so that causes appear only after their consequences have already been felt.
The structure gives the book the quality of a psychological mystery. Because events are revealed in reverse, the connections between the three central characters and the full shape of Ieva's situation come into focus gradually. Abele uses this arrangement to control what the reader understands at each stage, letting later chapters reframe earlier ones. The writing combines close attention to landscape and physical detail with careful portrayals of how her characters think and feel.
Inga Abele is considered one of Latvia's prominent younger fiction writers. High Tide won the 2015 AATSEEL Book Award for Best Translation into English, a prize given by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.
