We didn’t expect to find an astonishing equivalent to Annabel Bank’s Exercises In Control so quickly. Maybe, dear reader, have you been confronted with the sad reality fed by most books of that kind: collections of short stories are often rambling collages waiting for better days. That is not the case here.

With Come the Tide, Sam Reese excels in character depth and in the delicate art of balancing focus and distance. Beyond that, environments are key to the mastery of Reese’s craft. Such environments are constructed with a rare relevance, projecting the readers into the scenes, and making them feel like they could interact with the story and change its course. Author Miranda July has known commercial success thanks to this mastery, and we wish Sam a well-deserved walk down this very same path. 

The most pleasant and impressive virtue of Sam Reese is his taste for providing extended context. Context provides a richer experience for the reader, and after the book is closed, experience is all that remains and echoes.

Tonight, I found it hard to sleep; we had chosen a room that was close to the beach—easy surfing for him, for me, the sound of waves at night. They roar in my ears, and I feel the sand beneath his fingernails, against my scalp. But when his waters ebbed, the heat of his body felt oppressive. When his legs rolled onto mine, I tensed and recoiled. In the end, as I had before, I asked him to tell me a story.

– Sam Reese, excerpt from Tasting Notes

BONUS: Slowculturians tend to be jazzheads according to our non-scientific and totally invalid, non peer-reviewed study. But that’s not a reason to not enjoy Sam’s Blue Notes.