The Shore Summary
Sara Taylor

The Shore Overview

Sara Taylor’s novel The Shore is a generational saga that mostly adheres to a realistic mode, but also incorporates elements of fantasy and science fiction. Set on a small chain of islands off the coast of Virginia, it paints a raw portrait of the trials and tribulations, the suffering and the triumphs, of the residents, with a focus on the women and their resilience. The perspective fluctuates between a large cast of almost a dozen different characters, as well as between first, second, and third person, and it also flits back and forth in time between the years 1873 and 2143. The characters contend with dysfunctional families, domestic violence, and the limitations of the rural island home that they both love and hate. In a faintly didactic twist ending, the novel plunges into a post-apocalyptic future where most of the world has been wiped out by plague, compelling the island-dwellers to rebuild a whole new society which has utopic inflections.