I finished Penny Hancock’s debut novel on Sunday, having received it on Wednesday. My review pile is growing and I thought that Tideline would join the other books waiting for some attention. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it was the premise, maybe it was the promise of the Thames featuring as almost a character in itself, but Hancock’s novel was never going to last long on that review pile! So, without any review deadlines coming up, I’d bump it up the list and read it over the weekend.

Sonia lives in the River House, in Greenwich. Her father left her the house when he committed suicide years before, and her mother now lives in an assisted-living flat. Sonia’s husband Greg is a doctor who is frequently travelling and their only child, Kit, has just left home to go to Newcastle University, leaving Sonia alone in the house that she loves. She is becoming increasingly insular, cutting herself off from her friends, including Helen, and then she meets Jez, Helen’s fifteen year old nephew. He has come around to borrow a record from her husband Greg, but Sonia knows that she cannot allow him to leave. Inviting him in, she plies him with wine and cooks dinner for the two of them, letting Jez play Greg’s guitar and having, in her eyes, a lovely grown-up conversation. She also calls him ‘Seb’ occasionally which confuses him, although she laughs it off. When Jez is too drunk to get home, she puts him to bed in their music room, promising that he shouldn’t worry about it, that it happens to everyone occasionally.

What doesn’t happen to everyone is waking up to a raging hangover and finding yourself locked in the spare room of your host’s house. Sonia makes an excuse for locking the door whenever she leaves Jez in the music room, and he seems to believe her at first. However it isn’t long before she needs to sedate him with sleeping pills that she has taken from her mother in order to make him stay with her. When Greg and Kit announce that they are coming home for the weekend, she must make a decision- will she let him go, pretending that it was all part of an elaborate plan for his birthday surprise, or will she move him somewhere else?

Alternated with these sections focussing on Sonia are chapters which show the fallout from Jez’s disappearance, and how it affects his family and girlfriend. The key character in these sections is Helen, Sonia’s old friend and Jez’s aunt. He was staying with her and her family whilst he auditioned for music colleges. colleges which her less diligent sons would never get into. When he doesn’t come home, his mother flies to England and the tension in Helen’s household rises considerably. She resents her sister’s accusatory tone in reference to both her methods of child-rearing and Jez’s disappearance, but the accusations don’t only come from within her home. The police seem convinced that Helen knows more than she is letting on about her nephew’s whereabouts, and her increasingly noticeable drinking isn’t helping her cause.

Hancock throws you straight into the plot with very little build-up, and it thus feels very immediate. Sonia’s chapters are told in the present tense first-person, which really works when the narrative is based so greatly on her state of mind and her thought-processes. Strewn throughout her narrative about Jez are flashbacks to her relationship with Seb, her first and only real love, at least until Jez appeared at her door. The memories are dangerous and disturbing, both to Sonia and to the reader, telling of a relationship based on domination and hero-worship. It is clear that Seb had some horrible accident, but the details are only released slowly and teasingly as Sonia remembers things that she has kept hidden for thirty years.

I did feel as if there could have been a little more explanation as to why Jez didn’t fight to escape more as he became scared, but his reactions were just about believable as they were. In addition, Sonia feels more fleshed-out than Helen - the descriptions of her deteriorating mental state are stark and unsettling, and the gradual revelations about her and Seb are satisfying. On the other hand, Helen’s character feels slightly more two-dimensional, possibly because her narrative is in the third person. However, one aspect of her character that I did find interesting and believable was her having mixed feelings towards Jez. She resents her nephew, even when he vanishes, but she is honest enough with herself to realise that, whatever her feelings towards her sister, none of what has happened is Jez’s fault. Her sons are responsible for their own lives and it is fair on no-one to compare them to Jez.

It feels strange to be describing a book with such a dark subject matter as Tideline as enjoyable, but I really did find it a joy to read. It was uncomfortable in places, especially when Sonia describes stroking the sleeping Jez, but it is never gratuitous and is sensitively written. The way in which the Thames is used to build atmosphere, in all of its dark and dangerous glory, is wonderful and really helps to build the tension. Sonia’ s fixation with the river, and the events that occurred on it, is a constant throughout the novel, one that reflects  her swirling and increasingly confused thoughts. The ending, with its shocking revelation about Seb and Sonia, was a genuine surprise, and one which I haven’t been able to stop thinking about in the days since I finished the book.

It’s a thrilling début and I can’t wait to see what Hancock writes next.

4/5

This book was provided as a review copy, but I was not paid for my review, and the views expressed are mine.