SOURCE: "Bearing the Burden of Love," in Belles Lettres, Fall, 1992, pp. 2-3.

In the following review, Harris offers a laudatory appraisal of Time and Tide.

In the prologue of Time and Tide, we learn that the protagonist, Nell, has lost one son to a "watery" death and is terrified that her hastily spoken words have forced a permanent breach with her surviving son. Throughout the rest of Edna O'Brien's latest novel, Nell is dominated by her parents, husband, lovers, and children. She moves from a degrading marriage through a series of damaging love affairs, experiences a terrifying acid trip, suffers a nervous breakdown, loses her mother and her home, and watches her eldest son succumb to drug abuse. Although Nell struggles' through each of these situations, she is never prepared for the next catastrophe, which is all too likely to occur. In the hands of an ordinary writer...