The Highest Tide [Paperback]

Jim Lynch's extraordinary first novel centers around a runty thirteen year old boy who knows more than the local marine biologist about the teeming life in the mud flats of Puget Sound and its coves. Narrator Miles O'Malley is an insomniac who takes his battered kayak into the sound at night while his parents and the rest of the town sleep. He collects unusual specimens for aquariums and collectors, and digs for clams with his friend Phelps to sell to local restaurants. In the middle of the night, Miles hears the final exhalation of a dying giant squid. His discovery of the enormous creature never before found on the shores of North America prompts a rush of media attention. At first, no one questions how Miles managed to find the squid in the middle of the night despite his poorly fabricated lie, but when he discovers other non-native sea life and anomalies in the sea and tidal pools, he becomes an object of local fascination. Miles just wants to remain invisible. He is neglected by his parents, who have their own problems, and he struggles with his awkward crush on Angie, an eighteen-year-old, body-pierced girl who plays bass in a grunge band.

Miles is an avid reader of Rachel Carson and her moving descriptions of the ocean, but Lynch, through the voices of Miles, offers his own memorable descriptions of the life, both human and otherwise, that depends on Puget Sound. The narrative voice, with its honesty, wry humor, and poetic language, distinguishes this novel from so many other coming-of-age stories. Insightful without being dogmatic, sensitive without being melodramatic, the prose finds the perfect balance and pitch. Not unlike the earthquake that rattles Olympia--"it shook us just long enough and hard enough to make us feel helpless . . . and just short enough and mercifully enough not to kill us"--the writing makes the reader question her assumptions about the uniformity of marine life and of personal experience.

With this impressive debut, Lynch proves himself a writer to watch. His confident style guides the reader through an odd yet believable world where sea stars can be of any color and thirteen-year-old boys can befriend judges, psychics, and cult leaders. Readers will finish this novel with a sigh not unlike that of the giant squid marooned on the beach.

Set against the backdrop of Washington's Puget Sound, The Highest Tide is an exquisite coming of age story of that uses the mysteries of the life aquatic as a backdrop. Miles O'Malley is a special thirteen year old who has a talent for identifying all sorts of strange sea creatures.

Miles is somewhat of a child protégé, a speed reader from an early age, who loves to quote beloved nature writer Rachel Carson, he seems more obsessed with identifying the creatures of the tidal flats outside his home than mucking around with boys his own age. His encyclopedic knowledge of the ocean enables him to collect specimens that he sells to aquariums and to local restaurants in Olympia.

All that changes the summer before his 14th birthday, when Miles hears a strange sound. He soon finds himself face-to-face with a giant squid; a species that doesn't live anywhere near Puget Sound. Almost overnight, he's discovering other rarely seen sea creatures in the tidal flats. Suddenly, the young boy is thrust into the spotlight, quickly hailed by his community as a local hero, perhaps even a prophet.

Lately however, the winds of change have been bothering Miles. His working class parents have been hinting at divorce, His mother feels as though she's stranded in her tiny stilted house with an un-ambitious baseball fanatic who still barhops with is high school pals.

His elderly neighbor and best friend, the psychically inclined Florence, is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, and it's not that he can't imagine losing her, but her growing feebleness fits into the fact that he senses that everything is about to shift beneath him.

Miles notices that the bay itself is seemingly shifting into something else - "a trophy view for people rich enough to build houses on the Sunset Estates." He decides that his goal for the rest of the summer is to stop things from changing," to keep my bay, as I knew it intact."

But it doesn't help that Miles is obsessed with local bi-polar girl Rachel Carson. And that fellow friend and partner in crime, Phelps, while intent to impart healthy discussions about "Christy Decker's rack," also nags Miles about sex. The tide begins to rise, just as Florence predicted, and Miles soon finds himself sought after by scientists, journalists, and a group of strange, new-age cult members.

Of course, the young man takes most of this in his stride, as his coming-of-age cleverly coincides with a period of tumult in the ocean and the world around him. Miles never feels sadness on the bay, where the seashells, are as "unique and timeless as bones," where life is much denser in the sea than the air, and where the ocean spits stuff up on the beach, sending us postcards that we don't know how to read yet.

The prose is beautiful: "The albino moon so close and bright it seemed to give off heat," and the narrative philosophy simple and wise: "the wonders of the ocean show that we all die young, that in the life of the earth, we are houseflies, here for one flash of light." Author, Jim Lynch, has not only written a sensitive story of a responsive and remarkable young boy, but he also writes so expertly about the world of the tides.

It's a world where life descends into everything, every crack, every shell, and even between grains of sand. "Life on top of life, barnacles and limpets stuck to oyster shells, clinging to each other, piggybacking on larger shells and barnacles on top of everything." This crisp and clean world utterly captures Miles, and Lynch, through his delicate and intuitive storytelling, ensures that we are captured too. Mike Leonard September 05.

I received this book in the mail last week as my first selection from Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company's "Maiden Voyage Program" and I loved it. The main character resembles Owen Meany from John Irving's, "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Set in the Pacific Northwest, it is a teenage tale of death, innocence lost, love found and the mysteries of nature that we encounter (or choose not to encounter) every day seen through the eyes of an undersize boy who is wise beyond his age, but is still searching for answers. I was so pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book right through to the last page. Thank you, Holly!

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