Raised near the beaches of Arcachon, Chantal inherits from her mother a deep love of swimming in the sea. Through her young eyes, Thomas vividly evokes the sensory pleasures of the beach: the smell of seaweed on the shore, the first sharp touch of cold water. With her parents' troubled marriage in the background, the young Chantal roams the maritime landscape freely. In a series of short, delightfully varied chapters, Thomas depicts her growing sense of independence through her developing connection to her environment. Memories of Low Tide is at once a coming-of-age memoir and a multi-faceted exploration of the geography and culture of a seaside town.
"Wonderful . . . her descriptions are a kind of bottled perfection, of long days spent in the sea and sand" - Financial Times
"Family history lies submerged beneath the surface of the water; Chantal Thomas pulls off the delicate feat of slipping into the waters of her past without getting dragged under. In serene, voluptuous prose (beautifully translated by Natasha Lehrer) she conjures up her childhood in Arcachon after the Second World War, allowing us to share in that life, paced to the rhythm of the tides." - Lauren Elkin
"In spare, elegant prose Thomas explores the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive . . . Natasha Lehrer's translation is - appropriately - beautifully fluid." - TLS
"A story of inheritance, of the fluidity of a mother-daughter relationship dissolved in a calm sea, a kind of reverse amniotic fluid, in which to dive and luxuriate deliciously" - Marie Claire
"This is an infinitely gentle, oblique look at a whole century, passed through as a swimmer crosses the water, from one buoy to another... Haunting and elegiac" - Livres Hebdo
"A tender portrait of the author's mother, who passed on her love of the ocean... As you turn these dazzling pages, you pass from levity to humour, from insouciance to nostalgia, from necessary frivolity to deep solemnity. Melancholy has no place here... An intimate account, which sees Chantal Thomas touched by grace" - Le Figaro
"[Chantal Thomas] has invented a new literary genre: the liquid memoir, the watery autobiography... Chantal paints a striking portrait of her mother, so lackluster in the house yet so luminous among the waves... This book of liquid, salty prose that Colette would have liked so much...'" - L'Obs
"Sublime... Delightful" - L'Express
"A delicate evocation of her mother... Sensual and precise, Chantal Thomas's prose advances at the regular rhythm of Jackie's powerful crawl" - L'Humanité
"To evoke her mother, a naiad for whom the only promise of happiness lay in the call of the waves, Chantal Thomas shares and draws out this endless wonder with her Memories of Low Tide" - Le Monde
"Chantal Thomas paints a subtle portrait of her mother and interrogates the idea of inheritance" - Les Inrockuptibles
"A stirring hymn to inheritance and freedom" - Lire