Review: Tide of Stone

[klward]

by Kaaron Warren, Omnium Gatherum, 2018

A Review by Kyla Lee Ward

"There's one thing out there... you'll need to look for it. You'll know it when you find it."

"Don't let boredom eat away at you."

"Be careful. Look after yourself. Think of the future. Don't be too curious. Don't think you need to explore everything. Don't go too far down."

Phillipa Muskett, appointed as Keeper for 2014, receives all sorts of advice. She herself has been preparing her whole life, in various ways, for the year she will spend in the Time Ball Tower, tending to those imprisoned there. The experience either makes a person or breaks them irrecoverably, and she is determined to be among those who succeed.

Part personal horror, part Stanford prison experiment, part sheer poetry, Tide of Stone is a masterpiece. Never afraid to ask the big questions or to place evil under her literary microscope, in this, her fifth novel, Warren opens with the question of what is normal and abnormal, and what depends on the segregation of the two. Normal prisoners are not kept in the Tower; this is a fate reserved for "The heinous, the unrepentant, the undeniably guilty." Those for whom no amount of suffering could possibly be enough. Since the institution of the Tower and the Treatment in 1869, there have been those who have disagreed with the consensus, but in Tempustown, they are never many. "We're keeping society safe, Phillipa," her grandmother tells her. "Don't ever forget the importance of what you're doing."

Since 1869. The reader will glimpse every single year.

To read the complete review, please go here.