a summer in Monterey, on Cannery Row yes, Steinbeck's Cannery row, makes you want to go and read or reread it, you have Ben, a marine biologist, diver who is waiting for his daughter whom he sees very little of to move in for the summer.
Caddie named after a creature of the sea, won't spoil it for you, is angry and not so happy to be dumped on her father's doorstep, Hudson, is on a quest to authenticate a manuscript maybe written by Steinbeck, It's a coming of age summer for all three, I liked the slow pace of the storyline, I liked that the characters were multidimensionals and that even the background characters like the girlfriend's waiter that befriends Caddie has depth, Yes the turning point of the story is a bit obvious in a duh!moment way but still believable since Ben is so oblivious of himself and the lives of the people around him.
I loved the diving sections, Really. The aquarium too. There's cuddlefish squids, octopuses, sharks, Mixed with academic literature research how could I not love this book, This is my second book by sitelinkMichael Thomas Ford and I must say that he has the craft of writing down pat, I don't know anything about his background, and there's not much that is revealed by a casual google/wikipedia search, but I am mildly obsessed with how his stories come to life.
He has a precision in describing small actions such as eating a sandwich which put you right into the story, right there with the characters, He includes mastery level knowledge of very specific subject matter, in this case, marine biology, diving, and Steinbeck, all thematically combined in a Monterey California setting, He manages to writeprotagonists yes! each with interesting and meaningful story arcs, I don't know if that craft it taught in an MFA somewhere or is the result of diligent hard work, but I do know that I can turn to this author for a reliable solid read.
Wow. I was hooked from the first page, as Ben is diving, I know nothing at all about the subject or sea life, but I could see and understand everything that the author was describing, Makes me want to learn how to dive, myself!
I was a little annoyed when we left Ben's POV for Hudson, but I gradually came to love him as well.
Don't get this book if all you are interested in is the gay storyline, It took about half of the book before they even meet,
I loved this book and plan to hunt down the author's other books as well! An interesting take on life and its challenges, Challenges of being a parent, being a teenager, being aware, Ben has always found it difficult to be a parent, and is now facing his teenage daughter and summer vacation, Caddie is dumped on her father's doorstep for the summer and just not sure how to handle the fact that she really doesn't know him since her parents divorced nine years ago.
Hudson is haunted by his past and promises he made to his deceased lover, Roll this altogether with the potential of a newly discovered Steinbeck manuscript which seems to hint at "the love that dare not speak it's name" and you have the makings of a truly great story.
/stars
Excellent, solid read, The three main characters, Ben, Hudson and Ben's daughter, Caddie, are all interesting people who are searching for that most elusive thing for anyone connections within themselves and with each other.
This review contains spoilers for the book, Don't read if you don't want to know,
This books is told from three points of view, Ben, a marine biologist, a visitor named Hudson, and Ben'syearold daughter Caddie, I'm not a big fan of shifting points of view, but at least Ford gives each character full chapters, which makes it less jarring for the reader,
Personally, I tend to get more attached to one character's view and would rather stick with that, However, in this book that would definitely limit the reader's ability to know what was going on with the other two main characters,
Ben is a very closed off man, much more focused on his science and research than people, He's probably the one character I most relate to, He divorced and left his daughter and exwife nine years before and now Caddie, who's going through a difficult time, comes to stay with him in Monterey for the summer.
He has good intentions, but he's got no idea how to deal with a bitchy teenage girl, one who apparently is rather promiscuous as well,
We learn a lot about Caddie in her chapters, why she does some of the things she does, She's angry with her father and she goes out of her way to make him notice her, She's frustrated by his very laid back attitude, his inability to give her the confrontation she pushes him for, So, she tries harder, which leads to a nearly tragic end,
During this fatherdaughter reunion, Ben runs into a man named Hudson, Hudson is reseaching Steinbeck's life, He's trying to finish the work of a deceased lover,
Ben and Hudson become friends, It's Caddie who clues in on the attraction and she's jealous, She wants to drive Hudson away from her father,
This is where I was shaking my head, I found it hard to believe that Ben would be so completely oblivious to being gay until hiss, I know there are people who don't come out until later years, but we're inside Ben's head and he's confused and not really sure if he's gay or just attracted to Hudson, that whole, "I'm not really gay, but just gay for you" thing.
I'm not sure I buy that,
Still, it was rather romantic that they got together in the end, Plus, Ben and Caddie do manage to come to terms with their relationship after a few tense chapters at the end,
As a gay man who works with fish for a living this book is everything I needed, Also the depictions of scuba diving were very accurate, I could criticize this for feeling like one of those Lifetime channel movies of the week, . . but it's a very good movie of the week, and one I'm surprised hasn't been snapped up for a TV adaptation, It's nothing remarkable the Caddie storyline is a bitish, but it's comforting and engaging, and the developing relationship between Ben amp Hudson is handled with deft amp gentle skill.
Comfort reading of substantial quality, This was a great book, Although it's classified as Gay Fiction, the sexuality of the characters was somewhat minor to the story, It was much more about who they where as people and how they arrived at that place in their life, While there was MM sex, it was tame and intrinsic to the story line, Changing Tides is a novel about selfdiscovery, growth, maturation, and forgiveness, Its primary characters each experience a transformation, a realization about themselves they desperately sought and hungered for even as they deluded themselves into thinking they already knew all they needed to know about themselves.
Dr. Ben Ransome is a marine biologist entirely absorbed in his work, Hudson Jones is a literature student hoping to make a name for himself, Caddie Ransome is the now teenaged daughter of Ben and hasnt seen her father in nine years and deeply resents how he has abandoned her,
Caddie carries more baggage than most teenage girls as she struggles to find her own identity and to stake a place for herself in the world, She has rebelled against her mother in every way she could until, at last, her mother can deal with her no more and ships her off to spend summer with her father.
She arrives at his doorstep angry, hostile, and vicious, He had abandoned her and now her mother has rejected her, She “hates” them both and is resolved to make them pay,
Her father, Ben, had realized many years
ago that he knew nothing about being a father and that he was too frightened to learn, He and his wife had divorced and he left for Monterey, California to pursue his career and to escape who he was, He engaged himself entirely and deeply into his career because he could not even form the questions about himself he most needed to answer: who was he He was, in fact, a stranger to himself.
Hudson Jones comes to Monterey pursuing information about a manuscript he has discovered that may shed light on its author, John Steinbeck, In making the journey, he, too, is running away from himself, afraid to deal with his past, his life as it was, and the future he faced, He brings with his guilt and shame even though, as we find out, he deserves neither,
Together, the three wound each other, occasionally deeply, until a very near tragedy brings them together in recognition of who they really are, They become transformed and discover the lives they had never realized they kept themselves from having, Caddie is still a teenaged girl with all the angst of one Hudson realizes that he cannot hold himself responsible for the actions of others Ben discovered he had repressed the most important part of himself for too long.
He is free to feel both his emotional self and his sexual self, which he had long ignored,
I had little expectation of this book, I thought it was just a gay romance and that I would soon tire of it, Instead, I dug in. immersed myself in it, and hated every time I had to put it down, Rarely does an author portray an angry, confused teenaged girl so insightfully as Ford does in creating the character, Caddie, But he develops each of his characters brilliantly and with a sense of genuine authenticity, Every character is entirely believable,
In fact, the great strength of this novel is the authors meticulous development of each character, even the ones like Brian who would have only a small role in the overall scope of the novel.
While some authors burden the reader with too many details about times, places, events, or characters, Ford leads readers toward a full understanding of the characters, It is detailed, but never is it tiring, That full understanding of the characters is essential to realizing what the novel is really about,
I have rarely, if ever, read a novel which did such a fine job of showing the slow but steady growth and change in each of its main characters.
In the case of Caddie, the exposition of her growth is particularly clear and gradual as the novel develops,
Ford is also truly insightful into what makes us all human, all slightly flawed, all hoping to become something better than ourselves,
In the novel, each character is allowed to see the storyline through their own eyes, giving the reader essentially three narrators, yet each narrator is unable to see or appreciate the growth occurring within themselves.
Only when the growth is complete does each come to see how much theyve changed and how much they had hungered for the change even though they hadnt realized it.
Previously, I read Michael Fords Suicide Notes which I believed to be powerful, insightful, and memorable, That book merely demonstrated further the growth as an author Ford made from the time he wrote this one until writing that one, It is entirely unfair to pigeonhole him as a writer of gay romance, His books do include gay romance, but they are about far more than love stories, .