Tide

John Kinsella uses the minutiae of life to tell his stories, setting them in small coastal centres in the West Australian wheatbelt, its mining towns and also Perth… ‘Tide ‘ is a heartbreaking description of two boys walking out on tidal flats and perhaps not making it back to shore  as the tide comes roaring in. … My favourite was the bachelor farmer who flew to London  to see the snow  his English-born mother had talked about. This is an authentic Australian voice that reveals how  this country’s people think and live.

**** Jennifer Somerville Good Reading magazine February 2014

IT SEEMS jolly beach holidays and frolicking in welcoming waves is not what poet, author and academic John Kinsella had in mind when he put his collection of short stories together for Tide. The Australian coast is a dark and rather menacing place in many of these well-developed stories with something truly ominous often in the air, making for a real sense of suspense. In the title story, Tide, two young brothers set out to reach the horizon during low tide in mangroves, but discover that the tide sweeps in around them faster than they can escape it. Then there is Africa Reef where newcomer to town, 13-year-old Dylan, tries to achieve a sense of belonging with two other boys his age during a scary, dramatic boat trip led by the domineering father of one of the lads.

Shaunagh O’Connor, The Weekly Times, 3 April 2014