I didn't know what to think about this story. What is it about, exactly? The mystery of passion? The death of love? Regret?
I found the title, "The Littoral Zone," a tiny bit obvious. The littoral zone is described as "that space between high and low watermarks where organisms struggled to adapt to the daily rhythm of immersion and exposure." Then on the very next page she describes Jonathan and Ruby like this: "they swam in that odd, indefinite zone where they were more than friends, not yet lovers." I think Barrett is a fantastic writer, and maybe it's just because I wasn't terribly fond of this particular story, but did the littoral metaphor strike you as a mite belabored?
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2 comments:
I think there's more to the title than meets the eye. I think she intentionally belabored the obvious to add interest to the less-obvious.
She beats the obvious connection into the ground, starting with they agree that their first real conversation took place on the afternoon devoted to the littoral zone and continuing through the clunky passage you quoted.
But with an author of this quality, something awkward is usually a sign that there's more to it.
The title is about the story. The story is not about the time they spent together at the marine biology research station, it's about the failure of their relationship. They are spending their lives together in the littoral zone:
When the tension builds in the house and the silence becomes overwhelming, one or the other will say, "Do you remember...?"
And the tide washes over them.
I wasn't too fond of this story, either. I found the metaphor pretty boring and the story pretty dreary. Two people who gave up everything to be together, only to find they didn't like each other all that much. How dismal. I didn't feel much emotion for either character, so maybe why the story didn't impress me.
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