Catch up on our webchat with Book of the Month The Tidal Zone author Sarah Moss

[SorchaMumsnet]

If you haven't read anything by Sarah Moss yet, start now – with our May Book of the Month, The Tidal Zone. Following a family going through an unexpected crisis, this wise and witty novel takes a magnifying glass to the NHS, parenting and the stories we tell about ourselves.

When 15-year-old Miriam is found lying in the school playground not breathing, stay-at-home dad Adam and GP mum Emma find their world turned upside down. Suddenly, long hospital stays lacking conclusion and the constant weight of uncertainty become part of their everyday struggles. What is wrong with Miriam? And why has this happened to their family?

In The Tidal Zone, Sarah Moss insightfully and often wryly comments on our health service and parenthood, but also she explores the narratives we tell ourselves – from birth, to our inevitable deaths. Sarah herself is a Mumsnet Books favourite - Night Waking was our Book of the Month in May 2012 and we're thrilled to have her back. The Tidal Zone is tipped to be her breakout novel so jump on the bandwagon, quick!

Join the discussion on this thread and chat to Sarah Moss here from 9 -10pm on Wednesday 7 June.

Thank you Sarah for your answers. I'd probably also find it easier to imagine things from the perspective of a man living a similar life to me than a woman from a completely different walk of life.

Can I also ask if the university where Adam teaches is based on Warwick and does it have similar petty disputes about things like coffee cup lids?

Are you working on any future novels at the moment?

@Celama

Hi Sarah I enjoyed your book greatly if that is the description, probably related to it is a better one. As the mother of a child with a life limiting heart condition, I did find it hard going at times but that is simply a personal reaction. The constant affirmations of what had happened to Miriam as if Adam had to continually hear it to believe it and also the not knowing - that you can't just get an answer or a diagnosis although you expect medical staff to know everything and the questioning of any suspected sign of deterioration or change. I can't help but wonder whether you have had personal experience of something similar because of all the little nuances.

Because of Adams career, you obviously had to do an awful lot of research to write these sections of the book - my question is, do you have an interest in this subject anyway so it was a good excuse to put it into the storyline or was this a new subject for you and if so, how did you decide on history/architecture?

Well done on such an emotive novel and as I'm seeing other works of yours also getting good reviews, I'll make a point of looking out for these.

Thank you! I was fascinated by the relationship between diagnosis and story-telling. Adam desperately needs a story for what's happening to his family (have a look at who's actually telling Eli's story - it's not Eli), and he wants the diagnosis to be that story but it isn't, can't be, and he's going to have to live with the absence of story. Which is the challenge of the novel, which also needs a story: I was trying to write a story about living without a story.

@CountTessa

Rats, how have I only just discovered this. I loved the Night waking. Completely resonated with me, as a mother who'd only just moved into full nights sleep after about 7 years of atrocious sleep. And I loved the setting in the wilds of Scotland, remote and inaccessible, like our minds. Thank you for writing and discovering your gift.

Thank you very much! I still sometimes marvel at the gift of sleep...

@KTD1230

This is the easiest book I have read in a long time. I felt I could just sit down and lose myself in it. I had a baby girl earlier this year and I am so obsessed about checking if she is still breathing - hope I'm not still like this when she is 15!! At first I found it hard to consider children's mortality especially in the current climate. However, I feel that the message is to continue living the story, and not get hung up on the what ifs. I know it's been said before - but I really didn't get the parts about coventry cathedral - what was the purpose behind this? I loved the father's stories though. I also loved that the book was told from dad's perspective, I didn't get onto that right at the beginning. I just want to say thank you to mumsnet for introducing me to Sarah Moss. I had never heard or read anything by this author before. I will be checking out other books now!!

Thank you, and for asking the Coventry question directly because I've been sitting on my hands wanting to justify it! Adam is looking for stories of brokenness, stories that begin with trauma and end somewhere else, and he finds them in various places but mostly in his work on the Cathedral. I'm not suggesting that the aerial bombardment of a city is comparable to nearly losing one child, but that even in the most ordinary places - and Cov town centre is pretty ordinary in many ways - there are the traces and monuments of people who have known losses we can barely imagine and gone on living creatively and well. There are precedents for survival, intelligent reasons for hope.

@notqueenbee

Having really enjoyed this book, I'd like to suggest one of your other novels to my Book Club - but which one would you suggest ??

Thank you! Maybe try Bodies of Light?

Sorry, only just joined. We've been having exam stress meltdown in our house!. I just wanted to say before you go how I loved the book and thought you wrote the male character really well. It was very interesting for me as my husband is currently not working. I felt like I was experiencing how he must be feeling some of the time.

@GhostsToMonsoon

Thank you Sarah for your answers. I'd probably also find it easier to imagine things from the perspective of a man living a similar life to me than a woman from a completely different walk of life.

Can I also ask if the university where Adam teaches is based on Warwick and does it have similar petty disputes about things like coffee cup lids?

Are you working on any future novels at the moment?

Any university represented in this book is entirely the work of the author's imagination and in no way based on any experience she may or may not have. I like my job...

I'm just tentatively starting a second run at something that might be the next book. Maybe.

Thanks for the response and apologies for being so blunt!! I get in now

Ooh, good - you're still here! I've just remembered this. Thanks so much for such a brilliant book Sarah. Like others, I was mesmerised and couldn't put it down. With such brilliant detail about the hospital and the NHS, I found it quite a political novel - was this intentional?

@notqueenbee

Hello Sarah, Can you tell us how long it took you to write the book, and what was your daily discipline for writing?

I think about three years, including research. My discipline for writing is that if I've got more than an hour, I write, and if I've got less than an hour I do the thing that might stop me writing next time. I have a full-time job, two kids and a slightly obsessive running habit to accommodate.

@KTD1230

Thanks for the response and apologies for being so blunt!! I get in now

No need to apologise - I really did want someone to ask!

@MagicPenny

Ooh, good - you're still here! I've just remembered this. Thanks so much for such a brilliant book Sarah. Like others, I was mesmerised and couldn't put it down. With such brilliant detail about the hospital and the NHS, I found it quite a political novel - was this intentional?

Thank you! Sort of. I think of my last three novels as political in that they're written in sadness for where we seem to be going and hope-against-hope that we might not get there. This evening, The Tidal Zone seems quite optimistic to me.

Just reading that you are working on future book ideas - how long does it take to write each book, and do you start thinking about the next book before you finish the previous one?

Thanks Sarah for your answers sure given a glimpse to some of you!

Hi Sarah - incase you missed it, there's a question earlier up from Frogletsmum who asked about Bodies of Light - she said:

I also really loved the historical setting of Bodies of Light and I wondered if you have any plans for other books set in that period?

The novel has piqued my interest in Coventry Cathedral (my parents aso met at university - well, polytechnic - in Coventry) but I haven't been there.

Thank you for an interesting webchat.

And finally - if you have time, we'd love you to answer the Mumsnet Qs:

Naomi Alderman's The Power has just been announced as this year's Bailey's Prize winner. Have you read The Power and if not, have you read any of the other novels from the Bailey's short list?

What was the last book you gave someone as a gift?

What book are you looking forward to reading over the summer? And what would you recommend we should read?

And finally - can you describe the room where you wrote The Tidal Zone?

@RachelMumsnet

Sorry - was having a bit of a computer nightmare. I'll try again now to introduce Sarah....

We're delighted to welcome our bookclub guest this evening Sarah Moss, author of the The Tidal Zone, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Sarah is one of the only authors who has been our Book of the month author more than once. She joined us back in May 2012 to discuss her novel Night Waking.

Thank you so much for giving us your time tonight Sarah. We're really looking forward to the discussion.

We've got a few standard questions from Mumsnet HQ:

Naomi Alderman's The Power has just been announced as this year's Bailey's Prize winner. Have you read The Power and if not, have you read any of the other novels from the Bailey's short list?

What was the last book you gave someone as a gift?

What book are you looking forward to reading over the summer? And what would you recommend we should read?

And finally - can you describe the room where you wrote The Tidal Zone?

Over to you Sarah...

I haven't read The Power, but I have read most of the others, before they were shortlisted. It's a great list.

Artemis Fowl from Oxfam for my younger son, who's finding the series compulsive. Before that, I think Anna-Lena Lundberg's The Ice, which I've been giving to friends.

I don't really plan my reading, I just run out of fiction every few weeks and go to a good indie bookshop and ask for recommendations. Everyone should read Miriam Toews, especially All My Puny Sorrows which still makes me giggle and tear up on a fourth or fifth reading.

Ah. I'm not the kind of writer who has A Room of One's Own, though I'm working on it. On trains, in cafes, in my office when I can get away with it, at airports, sometimes while 'watching' my son play football. Late at night at the kitchen table. I have a proper study at home now but it's very ordinary, a bay-windowed semi from which I can see the the road and the neighbours clipping their hedges.

I was struck by the conversation Adam has with Emma in relation to Miriam being 'scared of death' and indeed 'dying'. It is 'brave' to acknowledge our own mortality as Miriam does. Do you think our society has tried to distance ourselves from death being a natural event?Children now are expected to live into adulthood and outlive their parents. The deaths in Syria seem far removed from our here and now.

@MerryPam

Just reading that you are working on future book ideas - how long does it take to write each book, and do you start thinking about the next book before you finish the previous one?

Yes. I imagine a sort of holding pattern, like planes, and sometimes I try to make the wrong one land before it's ready. It's about four years, I think, from first beginning to see glimmers of a book to publication, but sometimes much more.

@BearAusten

I was struck by the conversation Adam has with Emma in relation to Miriam being 'scared of death' and indeed 'dying'. It is 'brave' to acknowledge our own mortality as Miriam does. Do you think our society has tried to distance ourselves from death being a natural event?Children now are expected to live into adulthood and outlive their parents. The deaths in Syria seem far removed from our here and now.

I do think we're too distant from the idea of mortality. It's never fun to think about, but in most of the world now and most of the past everywhere, people would have known grief and loss earlier and more intimately than we do in Europe now. I don't think that makes for better people - goodness knows we have every reason to be deeply grateful for our health and life expectancy - but in other times and places the experience of the 'new normal' after loss would be entirely ordinary and part of the weaving of everyone's reality.

@RachelMumsnet

Hi Sarah - incase you missed it, there's a question earlier up from Frogletsmum who asked about Bodies of Light - she said:

I also really loved the historical setting of Bodies of Light and I wondered if you have any plans for other books set in that period?

Oops, thank you! Not quite that period, but somewhere in the holding pattern there's a novel in the very early 1900s.

That brings us to the end of the hour - and, I think, Sarah has managed to get through all the questions this evening. Thanks so much for your time and we're so pleased that this has introduced many Mumsnetters to your books. We do hope you'll come back to discuss your future novels.

Thanks to everyone for joining in this evening. A reminder that June Book of the month is Ann Patchett's Commonwealth.

Thank you very much to everyone! There were some great questions.

Thank you so much for my book ...it is a really interesting story and the first book I have ever had by this author...I shall certainly look out for her books again as she tells the story so sympathetically.