Chapter 11: A Break in Torremolinos
Chapter 12: The Disastrous Party
Chapter 13: On the Grand Canal
Chapter 14: Elizabeth Sips Her Wine
Chapter 15: ‘I Must Love Abby’
Chapter 16: A Modernizing Government
Chapter 1: A New Line of Thought
Chapter 4: ‘We Don’t Want no Trouble’
Chapter 5: Some Family Conversation
Chapter 8: Supper at Sandy Bassett
Chapter 10: Violet in Her Bath
Chapter 11: Flight to Austin, Texas
Chapter 12: The Future of the World
Chapter 13: An Arrival From Venice
Chapter 14: The Known Unknowns
Chapter 16: A Fuller Understanding
‘You are free men, whatever that means.’ So says Steve Fielding to some German soldiers, whose lives he spares during the closing events of a world war, in the freezing cold Ardennes. But Steve, as we learn in this complex unfolding of a life, is himself not a free man.
We find him first of all as a child, playing alone on a Norfolk beach – the beach that gives this complex tale its title.
Already, like a tide, doubt enters his life. Is he in danger? High on the dunes, a woman, almost a stranger, looks to see if Steve is safe.
So the question arises, to be solved if possible: do Steve’s parents wish to get rid of him? In love, in war or peace – or in an uncertain interlude between the two – the uncertainty continues to tease.
As this delightful and complex story unfolds, the reader meets new astonishments and some strange old events.
Questions remain, but now there’s beloved Verity – and a cheetah – and of course the sort of unexpected we all expect to meet.
A long and intriguing story unfolds before us.
Brian W. Aldiss
Oxford, 2015
At high tide, the sea lapped close to the dunes, leaving little sand to be seen.