Review - That Salty Air by Tim Sievert
In this fable of the sea, Hugh is a fisherman whose relationship with the sea turns stormy after a personal tragedy. “That Salty Air” portrays not only a man who is enraged by the primal fury of the oceans that give him his bounty, but of the woman who must struggle against his rage — his wife Maryanne — and hold their life together.
The couple live in a stark landscape on the edge of the sea, their only encounters with the real world being the letters brought to them by a friendly mail man on a bicycle. Two letters are received in the same delivery and both are life-changing — one, however, overtakes Hugh’s rationality with grief as he turns inward, beating himself with his own violent pity and punishing his wife with the same. The other letter might well sate him, but Hugh is beyond the point of calm.
The couple, though, are part of a much larger cycle of life and death and lurking under the ocean like a calm, ancient reminder is a giant squid that lords over sea life, fair but strict. When Hugh is finally able to lash out at the sea, it’s this creature that puts Hugh in the position of making the choice, of growing up and moving onward, of accepting the natural order of things.
Sievert presents a stark landscape in contrast to the bountiful sea with great skill as he presents the spinning emotionalism of Hugh, which sometimes, unfortunately, comes off as over-the-top in a way that’s far from the tone of the rest of the story. And while the point of the story is obviously to have Hugh’s histrionics stand opposite to the leviathan that doles out justice with a calm and logical demeanor, there are points where you hope that Maryanne just dumps the self-pitying and simplistic man-child that she’s married. Even the death of his mother really doesn’t excuse some of the characters behavior, and that makes it a little hard to care for Hugh’s outcome.
In Maryanne, however, Sievert has presented a strong female character and the true emotional center of the story.
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