Many people say they are going to write a novel. Most of us never get around to it. Some teeter on the edge but then, somehow, still don’t get around to it. A few of us, like me, are pushed. I was “pushed” by William Styron. Strange for an Australian to say but it’s true. Sophie’s Choice blew my mind and stayed with me for a long time. The only way to get rid of it, actually, was to write my own novel. I wanted in some small way to affect a reader the way he did me. That was my aim and still is.Recently I was able to bring the rest of my books into the house from the garage. As I put them all away, I set this book aside to read. It was the last William Styron I had left to read. Earlier this month I began Tidewater Morning and was immediately reminded why he is one of my favourite writers. And why he pushed me. In a funny way, reading his prose was like returning home. I found it meaningful too, reading the book within a week or so of Go Set a Watchman. These three stories seem to compliment Lee’s book. Not surprising, as both authors were born within a few years of each other.As Styron explains: “The tales are an imaginative reshaping of real events and are linked by a chain of memories. The memories are of a single place - the Virginia Tidewater of the 1930s.”The first story Love Day is about a young marine about to invade Japan in WWII. Listening to his commanding officer telling a long winded story, our marine remembers a long ago day with his parents after their Oldsmobile broke down beside a peanut field near the Virginia Carolina line.In Shadrach an incredibly old and ill black man turns up one day at the property where he used to be a slave decades ago. “From Shadrach’s breast there now came a gentle keening sound which, commencing on a note of the purest grief, startled me by the way it resolved itself suddenly into a mild faraway chuckle; the moonshine was taking hold. The pink clapper of a tongue lolled in the cave of the jagged old mouth. Shadrach grinned.“Ask him how old he is, Paul,” came the command.I asked him. “Nimenime” was the glutinous reply.“He says he’s ninety-nine years old,” I reported, glancing up from the ageless abyss.“Ninety-nine! Well, I’ll be goddamned!”In the title story, the same narrator remembers the day his mother died. It is a powerful, yet subtle and heart-wrenching story.I’ll let his wonderful prose speak for itself.“We heard the noise of shuffling feet, a thumping, raised voices. The doctor hurried through the living room and up the stairs while I followed, aware that the sound, or sounds, my mother was making was no longer a scream but a choked ebb and flow of breath, as if screaming had been so bottled up by exhaustion that all that could emanate form the core of her torment was a reedy and strengthless wail. Yet somehow she managed to form words, and the words I heard were: “Jeff, Jeff! Hold me!” Highly recommended.
William Styron fiction that doesn't have some length to it necessarily lacks some of the long, detailed, total involvement — a willingness to just let the gorgeous prose flow and flow — that I love; that said, the three short stories that make up "A Tidewater Morning" are pretty damned good.The stories, all published in the 1980s and reprinted here as linked tales from the life of Paul Whitehurst, at 20, 10 and 13 years of age, are interesting reflections featuring transformative events in his young life. There are no slam-bang conclusions or neatly tied-up plots here, just strong, emotionally involving tales from youth with enough of Styron's great prose to satisfy.In the first story, "Love Day," Paul is on a ship as it nears Japan during World War II, the ship's task a feint while Americans launch the "real" attack elsewhere. Paul, an only child, considers episodes from his youth, particularly involving his father, and the reflections hit him harder than he expected as he moves among his shipmates and commanding officer. It's strong but probably third-best of the tales.The second story, "Shadrach," is about a 99-year-old black man, who, in 1935, returns to his former home — the property on which he was a slave in Virginia. The man, dying, falls in and out of coherency while the family of Paul's young friend tries to soothe the old man in his final days. In the third, longest and best tale, Paul, 13, copes with his jarring family life as his mother dies. Here Styron's writing is in nearly full flower, though in truncated form because of the short story format.I held off on reading "A Tidewater Monring" for a long time. I suppose I thought tackling Styron in short story form would be a letdown. However, these tales are more thematically linked than I had expected, and individually and wholly I was satisfied. Styron was a treasure.
What do You think about A Tidewater Morning (2001)?
There is an excellent sense of both place and time in these three stories, fictionalized accounts of different periods in the author's life in Tidewater Virginia. I decided to read the book after seeing the movie Shadrach which is based on the middle of the three stories. But the story I liked best was the third, the title story, A Tidewater Morning. It tells of one morning in young Paul Whitehurst's life as his mother lay dying of cancer. Styron had an amazing vocabulary and the ability to create interesting and well-developed characters.
—Candice
I really enjoyed this collection of long short stories, three stories from the different times in the life of the fictional Paul, who apparently is much like the author himself. I enjoyed Shadrack the most of them, and I thought the voice and portrayal of the old black man were poignant and rang true. I also liked the last story, which seemed to me to ring so true about a family in crisis...the Great Depression, mother dying of cancer, differences between the life views of the husband and wife, which were stark. This is all overlaid by the boy Paul, age 12, who is trying to make sense of himself, his family and the world around him. The portrayal of Florence was spot on...I've known family retainers who were of the same character. I loved her, and I loved how she cared for and protected Paul. The philosophical differences between Jefferson and Adelaide were interesting. She, the liberal, well-educated Northerner who exhibits some deep on red prejudices that she doesn't care to admit is in stark contrast to her husband, a rural Southerner who seems to be able to take people at face value. I do believe that in spite of their differences and the horrible, painful disease that was consuming Addy, they really loved each other and loved Paul, too. I felt for that lonely little boy.
—Susan
I decided to read this book after seeing the movie, SHADRACH, on television. It was a great movie. Once I learned that it was based on William Styron's story, "Shadrach," I wanted to read the story. I found it in A TIDEWATER MORNING. The movie follows the story very closely, except that it continues the story beyond the ending in the book. All three of the extended short stories in A TIDEWATER MORNING are very good. I am now tempted to read more of his work. I have read one of his books, DARKNESS VISIBLE, several times. It is the best book on what depression is really like.
—Paul Waibel
