The Swift Dark Tide could be read solely to delight in the use of language. But of course, memoirs have a story, and this tells of the author’s family (both in Melbourne and in Odessa on the Black Sea), how she found love later in life, and how that love disrupts what was thought to be her settled existence. The memoir is written as vignettes from a diary, covering the three years in which her true love changes her life.

Ariel is from a Russian Jewish family. They lived beside – and revelled in – the saltwater of the Black Sea. She moved to Australia with her family when she was 10, where the Black Sea was replaced by the waters off St Kilda.

As you’d expect from the title, water is a significant motif throughout this compelling memoir. At the outset, Ariel uses water as the basis of a refreshing description of love: ‘(This is) a story of two women who walk into the sea of each other and never return’. The one immutable characteristic of tides, however, is their ebb and flow. If a tide comes in, it must also go out. The love each has for the other is all-consuming. Their respective partners – Ariel’s husband, Noah and her lover’s lesbian partner – know of their relationship. The strain of two relationships each pulls them apart. But as the tide ebbs, so must it eventually return.

There is a raw honesty in Ariel’s description of herself and her sexual awakening. Her discretion is paramount: her lover is never named. The treatment of her husband is sympathetic. Above all though, it’s the writing, which is unsurpassed. Her use of imagery is wonderfully original.

Reviewed by Bob Moore