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The Infinite Tides
Published In 2013 : 1st. Paperback Edition : 1st. Printing : Full Printing Numbers Listed, 1 - 10 : Bloomsbury Publishing : Overall, A Very Nice Book : Buy With Complete Confidence With Amazon's Excellent Refund & Returns Policies + SAPPHIRE'S Famed 24 HR. UK & International Shipping ( AT NO EXTRA UK CHARGE ) Guarantee :
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 172 reviews
January 30, 2012
I wrote it, so of course I feel obligated to give it 5 stars. But really you should read it and give it your own stars. However many you want. But five would be best.
April 7, 2012
This might be the best first novel I have ever read. I mean even counting the famous ones by dead people. The writing is rich and lyrical. The emotions complex. The math theory is super smart and compelling, without detracting from the emotional punch Astronaut Keith Corcoran's story packs. There are so may books these days where I think, this would have been such a good book if it had only been 100 pages shorter, but I could have read 400 more pages about these characters and in this voice. Bravo for Christian Kiefer
June 17, 2023
4.5/5 stars
A quietly brilliantly, melancholic novel about grief and displacement that will leave you feeling inspired to just sit and stare at the night sky for a second, contemplating your feelings on it. When you’re doing so, you might see a satellite pass by, and feel the same sense of smallness our protagonist feels after he returns from his stent at the ISS, knowing his life can literally only go downwards from here on out. You might also see my soul floating up there, after leaving my body upon my realizing this masterpiece was a debut…
A quietly brilliantly, melancholic novel about grief and displacement that will leave you feeling inspired to just sit and stare at the night sky for a second, contemplating your feelings on it. When you’re doing so, you might see a satellite pass by, and feel the same sense of smallness our protagonist feels after he returns from his stent at the ISS, knowing his life can literally only go downwards from here on out. You might also see my soul floating up there, after leaving my body upon my realizing this masterpiece was a debut…
August 9, 2015
An incredible novel by a new writer who has just made a strong literary debut. I found this story utterly compelling, truly inventive and deeply layered with the most profound human insights. The craftsmanship, which counts for quite a bit with me, was really tight and nuanced. And yet it was almost invisible, by which I mean I was never distracted by the good writing. As I was captivated early on my career by Chaos Theory and the science of space exploration, I have sought out the works that reflect with great breadth and depth on how these complex mathematical principles can apply to actual lived experience, and this work demonstrated that to me so beautifully. But it's the inner space of the human soul that Kiefer is really interested in. He plumbs the depths of a man in great despair, dealing with loss and confusion, who falls into his own black hole and can't find his way back out. It's a rich story that will be utterly familiar to contemporary readers and yet will take them on a new fresh journey in the human condition. I loved this.
July 24, 2012
This book is infinite, too. Don't expect big moments. Or action. Or likeable characters.
Well-written. Melancholy. Not for me.
May 27, 2013
Stunning in its articulation of the vagaries of existence, the importance of living in the present, and the profound nature of human connection.
August 10, 2012
In this novel, Kiefer has created a moving story about a mathematical genius, Keith Corcoran, who manages to fulfill his life mission of being an astronaut. The only problem is that when his teenaged daughter dies in a car accident while he's on an international space station, and his wife leaves him, he is left to deal with the consequences of the isolation he always sought out. Keith is a fascinating character. He feels more connected to numbers - which he sees in colors and treats as if they have their own corporeal existence - than he does to people. He discovered early on that his daughter shares his gift, but when she becomes more interested in a regular life - dating boys and participating in cheerleading - he's disappointed with her.
After her death, he has to come back to earth and deal with his regret that his monomaniacal pursuit of his career goals took him away from his family for so many long stretches that he lost all connection to them . The house he moves back into - completely emptied of all furnishings when his wife left him with the request that he sell it - becomes a metaphor for just how empty and hollowed out his life has become. As sad as all this sounds, it's not a depressing book to read because Kiefer does a good job of getting inside Keith's head and showing how he perceives the world.
Be prepared when you read this, however, that there is a lot of lyrical writing, with very abstract language, that conveys Keith's mode of thinking. The first 40 pages alone are full of that language - as we get long descriptions of the best moment of Keith life's - when he's on a spacewalk outside the space station, installing a robotic arm that he, as an engineer, designed. It's moving and poetic - but it also takes a long while to get the main gist of the story - dealing with the aftermath of his daughter's death.
While I liked the novel very much, that was my one quibble with it - that it went down some tangential paths that aren't as compelling as the ones that flesh out the main premise of the book. I don't think it's fair to quarrel with how a writer chooses to fill out a story (but of course I will anyway) but in this case I was disappointed that he didn't deliver more background details about Keith's relationship with his daughter and his wife, and what his feelings might have been while he was locked up in the space station, unable to return to earth, until 3 months after his daughter died.
We get some of that, and when we do, they are the most powerful sections of the book - particularly the flashbacks of Keith discovering, when his daughter is very young, that she has inherited his mathematical genius and then later, during her teenaged years, when he tells her how disappointed he is that she close to lead the normal life of a teenager and not do more with her gift. With his wife, there is just a brief scene about how they met and then just brief and shrill phone conversations.
What we get a instead are a few, albeit very hot and sexy, scenes from the affair he starts with the neigbhor, and then many scenes about the friendship he strucks up with a Ukrainian immigrant he meets at a Starbucks who used to work at a Russian astronomical observatory, but who since coming to America has been underemployed as a stockboy at a Target.
Ultimately, that friendship becomes an important part of the story but for the early scenes when he keeps running into the Ukranian at a Starbucks and then rescues him when after he's passed out drunk there to the many scenes when they sit in an empty lot next to the astronauts' house watching the stars, it feels like a good chunk of the novel isn't living up to the premise the author set up.
While finding some of these sections a little slow and tedious, I couldn't help but compare it in my mind to another tale about the loss of a child told from the father's perspective that I read this summer. In the novel You Came Back by Christopher Coake, we start with a father who has just started to remake his life seven years after his son died, falling down stairs at home -- an event that led to the dissolution of his marriage. Just when he becomes engaged to the new woman in his life, a woman who bought his old house seeks him out to tell him his son's ghost in in the house, calling out to him. If you played the Stephen King game (suggested in his book on writing) of "What if" a character had to deal with this scenario, Coake delivers masterfully on every aspect you'd expect a man to have to deal with in that situation -- disbelief, anger, then a desperate wish to believe it's true, and then a a reconnection to his ex-wife when she hears the news.
In this novel about Keith's loss, I wanted to know so much more about his daughter, his relationship with his wife, and the three months he spent stuck up in the space station after she died, because conditions wouldn't let him return any sooner. By the end of the novel, though, the relationship with the Ukranian that didn't initially seem as consequential or relevant as any of those matters does play an important role in Keith's "re-entry" into life on earth. And admittedly, many of the details and story elements Kiefer choose to include fit with a man who lived so much in his head and had trouble connecting with people. Coming back to earth, Keith is forced to forge relationships -- he wants to do nothing but get back to work and lose himself into his career responsibilities, but NASA won't let him until it's obvious he's dealt with his grief and its main physical manifestation, severe migraines. The relationship with his Ukranian friend proves very important and in the last quarter of the book, their connection plays out in interesting ways. In the end, while I may not have been riveted to every single page, I still enjoyed the entire experience because the novel tells a powerful story about how one man deals with tragedy and begins to rebuild his life from the ashes of it.
After her death, he has to come back to earth and deal with his regret that his monomaniacal pursuit of his career goals took him away from his family for so many long stretches that he lost all connection to them . The house he moves back into - completely emptied of all furnishings when his wife left him with the request that he sell it - becomes a metaphor for just how empty and hollowed out his life has become. As sad as all this sounds, it's not a depressing book to read because Kiefer does a good job of getting inside Keith's head and showing how he perceives the world.
Be prepared when you read this, however, that there is a lot of lyrical writing, with very abstract language, that conveys Keith's mode of thinking. The first 40 pages alone are full of that language - as we get long descriptions of the best moment of Keith life's - when he's on a spacewalk outside the space station, installing a robotic arm that he, as an engineer, designed. It's moving and poetic - but it also takes a long while to get the main gist of the story - dealing with the aftermath of his daughter's death.
While I liked the novel very much, that was my one quibble with it - that it went down some tangential paths that aren't as compelling as the ones that flesh out the main premise of the book. I don't think it's fair to quarrel with how a writer chooses to fill out a story (but of course I will anyway) but in this case I was disappointed that he didn't deliver more background details about Keith's relationship with his daughter and his wife, and what his feelings might have been while he was locked up in the space station, unable to return to earth, until 3 months after his daughter died.
We get some of that, and when we do, they are the most powerful sections of the book - particularly the flashbacks of Keith discovering, when his daughter is very young, that she has inherited his mathematical genius and then later, during her teenaged years, when he tells her how disappointed he is that she close to lead the normal life of a teenager and not do more with her gift. With his wife, there is just a brief scene about how they met and then just brief and shrill phone conversations.
What we get a instead are a few, albeit very hot and sexy, scenes from the affair he starts with the neigbhor, and then many scenes about the friendship he strucks up with a Ukrainian immigrant he meets at a Starbucks who used to work at a Russian astronomical observatory, but who since coming to America has been underemployed as a stockboy at a Target.
Ultimately, that friendship becomes an important part of the story but for the early scenes when he keeps running into the Ukranian at a Starbucks and then rescues him when after he's passed out drunk there to the many scenes when they sit in an empty lot next to the astronauts' house watching the stars, it feels like a good chunk of the novel isn't living up to the premise the author set up.
While finding some of these sections a little slow and tedious, I couldn't help but compare it in my mind to another tale about the loss of a child told from the father's perspective that I read this summer. In the novel You Came Back by Christopher Coake, we start with a father who has just started to remake his life seven years after his son died, falling down stairs at home -- an event that led to the dissolution of his marriage. Just when he becomes engaged to the new woman in his life, a woman who bought his old house seeks him out to tell him his son's ghost in in the house, calling out to him. If you played the Stephen King game (suggested in his book on writing) of "What if" a character had to deal with this scenario, Coake delivers masterfully on every aspect you'd expect a man to have to deal with in that situation -- disbelief, anger, then a desperate wish to believe it's true, and then a a reconnection to his ex-wife when she hears the news.
In this novel about Keith's loss, I wanted to know so much more about his daughter, his relationship with his wife, and the three months he spent stuck up in the space station after she died, because conditions wouldn't let him return any sooner. By the end of the novel, though, the relationship with the Ukranian that didn't initially seem as consequential or relevant as any of those matters does play an important role in Keith's "re-entry" into life on earth. And admittedly, many of the details and story elements Kiefer choose to include fit with a man who lived so much in his head and had trouble connecting with people. Coming back to earth, Keith is forced to forge relationships -- he wants to do nothing but get back to work and lose himself into his career responsibilities, but NASA won't let him until it's obvious he's dealt with his grief and its main physical manifestation, severe migraines. The relationship with his Ukranian friend proves very important and in the last quarter of the book, their connection plays out in interesting ways. In the end, while I may not have been riveted to every single page, I still enjoyed the entire experience because the novel tells a powerful story about how one man deals with tragedy and begins to rebuild his life from the ashes of it.
February 25, 2015
I began reading The Infinite Tides almost immediately after I finished Kiefer's 5-star book, The Animals. I think I was expecting (and hoping for) more of the same – exciting plot, a main character I loved, written almost like poetry. The author himself had warned me that “My first book is a much different animal. It’s meant to have almost zero velocity (like a Henry James novel) and spins in one place (purposefully, I mean), so you may have to get into it in a different way.” Of course, he was completely right, and at one point I had to put the book down for a few days. I ended up re-starting The Infinite Tides from the beginning, just reading, without any expectations, and let Kiefer's writing once again work its magic on me.
This book is a much different animal, and the fact that Kiefer is capable of writing such completely different books, each excellent in their own way, is part of why this is another 5-star read. I won't recount the plot, but it is imaginative, original, and horrifying. The main character, astronaut Keith Corcoran, is not a completely likeable guy, but how he deals with (or doesn't deal with) the bleak, grief-filled circumstances of his life form the basis of his this book. Several characters question Keith's devotion and single-mindedness in becoming an astronaut, and note that that path has ill-prepared him for life after he has reached this pinnacle. He has this truly interesting, synesthesia-like relationship with numbers, and relates to them much better than to people. I appreciated the juxtaposition of how math has answers and logic but human nature is often completely without logic or answers. Keith does end up in an interesting friendship with Peter, a Ukrainian astronomer who now works at Target, and it is Peter's wife Luda who provides a wonderful end to this book.
Just as Kiefer chose the perfect setting for The Animals, he did the same for The Infinite Tides. The empty ranch house that Keith returns to, on one of many culs-de-sac in suburbia, surrounded by big box stores and Starbucks, helps the reader understand and picture how grim and meaningless things are for Keith. There is something that happens in/to the house that was perfect for Keith's story, literally and metaphorically, but it feels like a spoiler so I won't give it away. Read The Infinite Tides and find out for yourself. I'm looking forward to reading Kiefer's next novel, knowing it will most likely be something completely different, but perfectly wonderful.
This book is a much different animal, and the fact that Kiefer is capable of writing such completely different books, each excellent in their own way, is part of why this is another 5-star read. I won't recount the plot, but it is imaginative, original, and horrifying. The main character, astronaut Keith Corcoran, is not a completely likeable guy, but how he deals with (or doesn't deal with) the bleak, grief-filled circumstances of his life form the basis of his this book. Several characters question Keith's devotion and single-mindedness in becoming an astronaut, and note that that path has ill-prepared him for life after he has reached this pinnacle. He has this truly interesting, synesthesia-like relationship with numbers, and relates to them much better than to people. I appreciated the juxtaposition of how math has answers and logic but human nature is often completely without logic or answers. Keith does end up in an interesting friendship with Peter, a Ukrainian astronomer who now works at Target, and it is Peter's wife Luda who provides a wonderful end to this book.
Just as Kiefer chose the perfect setting for The Animals, he did the same for The Infinite Tides. The empty ranch house that Keith returns to, on one of many culs-de-sac in suburbia, surrounded by big box stores and Starbucks, helps the reader understand and picture how grim and meaningless things are for Keith. There is something that happens in/to the house that was perfect for Keith's story, literally and metaphorically, but it feels like a spoiler so I won't give it away. Read The Infinite Tides and find out for yourself. I'm looking forward to reading Kiefer's next novel, knowing it will most likely be something completely different, but perfectly wonderful.
October 25, 2012
There are some very great things about this book, some very sad things but it is certainly worth reading. I have no experience with many of the central themes here -- a taciturn, driven main character, the loss of a child, the world of higher mathematics, and space travel. It's to Christian Kiefer's credit that he can weave these elements into a book that hooked me for it's nearly 400 pages. His descriptions of the lifelessness in the cul-de-sacs of suburbia are reflected in relentlessly stark prose while describing the interior life of the protagonist (or agonist), astronaut Keith Corcoran. For that achievement alone, this is some damn superb writing.
Corcoran's relationship with a lively Ukranian man and his family in the cul-de-sac provides an interesting contrast to the vapid life around them -- you just gotta love a couple of guys that spend their nights gazing at stars on an abandoned couch in an empty lot while smoking weed and knocking back beers.
I have a feeling this author is definitely one to watch -- he's a former student of the great T.C. Boyle and, even though he doesn't imitate him, he has the same ability Boyle has to create characters that jump into your life while you are involved in reading their stories.
I'd give it five stars but I felt a little hit over the head with all the math references. Sorry, Kiefer, but I'm not going to look up "fractals" and "alephs", etc. when I'm trying to find out what happens to characters you've made me care about.
Corcoran's relationship with a lively Ukranian man and his family in the cul-de-sac provides an interesting contrast to the vapid life around them -- you just gotta love a couple of guys that spend their nights gazing at stars on an abandoned couch in an empty lot while smoking weed and knocking back beers.
I have a feeling this author is definitely one to watch -- he's a former student of the great T.C. Boyle and, even though he doesn't imitate him, he has the same ability Boyle has to create characters that jump into your life while you are involved in reading their stories.
I'd give it five stars but I felt a little hit over the head with all the math references. Sorry, Kiefer, but I'm not going to look up "fractals" and "alephs", etc. when I'm trying to find out what happens to characters you've made me care about.
February 8, 2019
Esta novela me habría gustado bastante más de haber estado contada de otra forma. El argumento tiene interés y potencial: un astronauta que, justo cuando está en el espacio, recibe la noticia de la muerte de su hija y el abandono de su mujer. Lo que no me convence en absoluto son los personajes. Da la sensación de que el autor se hubiera obcecado en una idea inicial (protagonista inepto en lo emocional y que piensa que todo se puede resolver como un problema matemático, exmujer convertida en enemiga, extranjero simpaticón), y luego no hubiera pasado de repetir y repetir lo más obvio de ese esquema. Hablando de repeticiones, si me hubiera tomado un chupito de vodka por cada vez que sale la palabra "ecuación" para referirse tanto a churras como a merinas, habría acabado fácilmente en el coma etílico. Se nota a la legua que el autor no domina las Matemáticas de las que tanto partido metafórico quiere sacar, y eso lo veo con cierta vergüenza ajena incluso yo, con mi modesta cultura matemática.
Están muy logrados, por otro lado, el tono melancólico, la descripción de la acedia que sigue a una pérdida, y el retrato del enorme no lugar que son algunos suburbios estadounidenses de clase media. Seguramente Christian Kiefer es un buen narrador, pero en su primera novela se ha forzado a ir por un camino que no convenía ni a su talento, ni a la historia ni a los personajes. Ni a las Matemáticas, sobre todo a las Matemáticas.
Están muy logrados, por otro lado, el tono melancólico, la descripción de la acedia que sigue a una pérdida, y el retrato del enorme no lugar que son algunos suburbios estadounidenses de clase media. Seguramente Christian Kiefer es un buen narrador, pero en su primera novela se ha forzado a ir por un camino que no convenía ni a su talento, ni a la historia ni a los personajes. Ni a las Matemáticas, sobre todo a las Matemáticas.
February 25, 2012
I managed to snag a galley of this book as part of my research for an article I'm writing about Sacramento area authors. I love that part of my job, I must admit.
I don't even know where to begin to sing The Infinite Tide's praises. Kiefer does a fantastic job bringing you into astronaut Keith Corcoran's world, a world in which he is lost and longing to be back in space, where things made more sense. The characters are complex and imperfect, the narrative is moving. He obviously immersed himself in astrophysics and mathematics because those parts of the book where Corcoran muses about his life's work are dense with detail yet they aren't intimidating to a reader like me, who struggles to balance her checkbook.
A beautifully written book. I predict all the cool kids will be reading it this summer when it comes out.
I don't even know where to begin to sing The Infinite Tide's praises. Kiefer does a fantastic job bringing you into astronaut Keith Corcoran's world, a world in which he is lost and longing to be back in space, where things made more sense. The characters are complex and imperfect, the narrative is moving. He obviously immersed himself in astrophysics and mathematics because those parts of the book where Corcoran muses about his life's work are dense with detail yet they aren't intimidating to a reader like me, who struggles to balance her checkbook.
A beautifully written book. I predict all the cool kids will be reading it this summer when it comes out.
February 6, 2012
I read for a living. I am lucky enough to read a lot of good books that way (and, okay, many that are, well, not so good). This was an especially good year, but even so The Infinite Tides was neck and neck with David Vann's new novel for best book I got paid to read in the last two or three years. And it has the distinct advantage of not being excruciating from beginning to end (this is not at all a criticism of Vann, Dirt is a powerful book and worth the agony, but whatever reviewer said Vann makes The Road look like a walk in the park was not kidding).
A really lovely book, pitch-perfect from beginning to end. It somehow made me think of Pnin, though I can't exactly say why. Buy it, and keep my job meaningful!
A really lovely book, pitch-perfect from beginning to end. It somehow made me think of Pnin, though I can't exactly say why. Buy it, and keep my job meaningful!
July 24, 2012
I gave it one star because zero stars doesn't show up.
With the grammatical errors I am surprised this guy is a writing teacher.
This book had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It was boring and depressing. I read it all hoping that the idiot would
wake up and smell the roses. I suppose the author was putting forth
his theory that we are consistent in our behavior.
It reminds me a little of the book Something Happened in that the character
was a hopelessly self-involved jerk.
With the grammatical errors I am surprised this guy is a writing teacher.
This book had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It was boring and depressing. I read it all hoping that the idiot would
wake up and smell the roses. I suppose the author was putting forth
his theory that we are consistent in our behavior.
It reminds me a little of the book Something Happened in that the character
was a hopelessly self-involved jerk.
July 5, 2012
Finished it around 2 AM, immediately went outside and looked at the stars. If each chapter could be condensed, folding the words like Mad Magazine's fold-in back cover, matching the A and B arrows = poem.
August 5, 2013
This novel is filled with beautiful language and imagery, and beneath the surface is a story of grief set against the backdrop of numbing suburbia. I couldn't put it down.
May 19, 2017
I did enjoy(ish) the book, it was a little slow-paced, but beautifully written. I got about halfway through before I just ran out of time and book club was upon me. Honestly, the book was a little too slow and depressed and I was kind of glad to run out of time on this one. It was okay, but I don't regret not finishing it. Unfortunately.
June 12, 2012
Christian Kiefer's mellow meditation on fallen astronaut Keith Corcoran's life, THE INFINITE TIDES, takes you into its ebb and flow through the gentle persistence of everyday happenings as they lap up against the spaceman. A victim of a different sort of space disaster, Corcoran is on an international space station when he is told that his teenaged daughter has died in a car accident. He remains on the mission for three months and has to view the funeral by tape.
This is all in the past, however, as the book begins. The reader meets the astronaut in a Houston suburb where new pieces of wreckage appear from this earthbound tragedy. His wife has left him; she has emptied the house of all of its furnishings; and what remains becomes a metaphor for the shell of a life he must now contend with.
Meantime, a subplot begins to inch its way into the main one as the book unfolds. Corcoran meets a Ukrainian immigrant, Peter Kovalenko, who worked as an astronomer in the old country and is employed stocking shelves at Target in the new country. This bitter man frequently hauls a telescope into an empty lot adjacent to Corcoran's, then peers into the black emptiness Corcoran has just returned from to identify Messier objects in the night sky. The listless astronaut/protagonist moves between the immigrant's orbit, sharing beer and pot, and a neighbor lady's, sharing bed and showers. Adrift, in pain, and at a loss? This isn't the half of it, given the personal demons and daily slings and arrows that continue to assault him.
One philosophical thread surrounds discussion of a comet that has a slight chance of hitting the earth. Here is a typical exchange between the immigrant, Peter, and the astronaut, Keith, while gazing at the night sky:
"The world is always coming to end," Peter said. "Comet is coming or is not coming. So this does not matter."
"Very philosophical," Keith said.
"Not philosophy. True. Stars and galaxies are being born and dying. This is what you see when you look through telescope. Things sometimes crash into other things. Galaxies absorb other galaxies. These things happen. The world is always coming to end.
Keith paused. Then he said, "Let's party like it's 1999."
This humorous touch, coming through a metaphor darkly, is typical of the author's style. Peter's "non-philosophy" is actually an opening that Keith can choose to enter or ignore. He thinks his world HAS come to an end, but the Ukrainian would have him believe that "these things happen." Though he possesses a top rate mathematical mind, Keith Corcoran is struggling with this equation. Helping him through this problem during for a second reentry into life is this novel's sometimes sad, sometimes bittersweet mission.
This is all in the past, however, as the book begins. The reader meets the astronaut in a Houston suburb where new pieces of wreckage appear from this earthbound tragedy. His wife has left him; she has emptied the house of all of its furnishings; and what remains becomes a metaphor for the shell of a life he must now contend with.
Meantime, a subplot begins to inch its way into the main one as the book unfolds. Corcoran meets a Ukrainian immigrant, Peter Kovalenko, who worked as an astronomer in the old country and is employed stocking shelves at Target in the new country. This bitter man frequently hauls a telescope into an empty lot adjacent to Corcoran's, then peers into the black emptiness Corcoran has just returned from to identify Messier objects in the night sky. The listless astronaut/protagonist moves between the immigrant's orbit, sharing beer and pot, and a neighbor lady's, sharing bed and showers. Adrift, in pain, and at a loss? This isn't the half of it, given the personal demons and daily slings and arrows that continue to assault him.
One philosophical thread surrounds discussion of a comet that has a slight chance of hitting the earth. Here is a typical exchange between the immigrant, Peter, and the astronaut, Keith, while gazing at the night sky:
"The world is always coming to end," Peter said. "Comet is coming or is not coming. So this does not matter."
"Very philosophical," Keith said.
"Not philosophy. True. Stars and galaxies are being born and dying. This is what you see when you look through telescope. Things sometimes crash into other things. Galaxies absorb other galaxies. These things happen. The world is always coming to end.
Keith paused. Then he said, "Let's party like it's 1999."
This humorous touch, coming through a metaphor darkly, is typical of the author's style. Peter's "non-philosophy" is actually an opening that Keith can choose to enter or ignore. He thinks his world HAS come to an end, but the Ukrainian would have him believe that "these things happen." Though he possesses a top rate mathematical mind, Keith Corcoran is struggling with this equation. Helping him through this problem during for a second reentry into life is this novel's sometimes sad, sometimes bittersweet mission.
April 29, 2012
Let me start by saying I won a copy of The Infinite Tides through Goodreads First Reads. I love mystery and surprise and enjoy having the story unfold before me without any preconceived ideas or information that might spoil the plot or distract me from "hearing" the words of the author. I choose books by recommendation, rating, title, authors I like, sometimes cover art and usually the first line of the blurb (never more than that because it is TMI). Therefore, I knew nothing more about this book then that "Keith Corcoran has spent his entire life preparing to be an astronaut" and that I really liked the title. This book was very well written and quite impressive for a first novel. It is what I call a "thinker's book"; throughout the story there are passages that make you stop and pause, wonder, think and maybe even analyze yourself.
The downfall of many a novel is poor dialogue, stilted and unrealistic, that may further the plot but does not seem natural and is often downright lame. Not so with this novel, the dialogue seems real and true to the characters although every now and then I wanted to kick Keith when he said "ok", lol.
As a lover of words, my favorite lines in the book? "What could he say? He had opened upon an infinity and it had become an infinity of loss." Great book Christian, would not mind getting a free copy of your next book, but I am also willing to buy your next novel too, well done.
The downfall of many a novel is poor dialogue, stilted and unrealistic, that may further the plot but does not seem natural and is often downright lame. Not so with this novel, the dialogue seems real and true to the characters although every now and then I wanted to kick Keith when he said "ok", lol.
As a lover of words, my favorite lines in the book? "What could he say? He had opened upon an infinity and it had become an infinity of loss." Great book Christian, would not mind getting a free copy of your next book, but I am also willing to buy your next novel too, well done.
October 7, 2019
I found myself conflicted initially after reading this back in may. I took it to a charity shop but after a couple weeks, i went back and bought it again. I felt I had missed the point to a book I otherwise had high hopes for. I'm surprised nobody picked it up, the cover art is awesome...
Its a well written book there is no doubt about it but at 400 pages it is very drawn out. The imagery is great but, there wasnt enough of a story to keep me invested and the imagery is limited when the majority of it is set in what you could say is a 2 dimensional cul-de-sac. I had the urge to skim through chunks that were very slow. I loved the concept and i was looking forward to seeing what journey Keith would take me on but, as I got deeper, I realised that Keith's journey would be an inner journey and instead he was going to stay in and paint the walls.
Its a well written book there is no doubt about it but at 400 pages it is very drawn out. The imagery is great but, there wasnt enough of a story to keep me invested and the imagery is limited when the majority of it is set in what you could say is a 2 dimensional cul-de-sac. I had the urge to skim through chunks that were very slow. I loved the concept and i was looking forward to seeing what journey Keith would take me on but, as I got deeper, I realised that Keith's journey would be an inner journey and instead he was going to stay in and paint the walls.
July 12, 2018
Beautifully written book, a novel idea. Enjoyed reading it a lot. I only wish I knew if he went back... :)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 5, 2026
“He was a mathematician, an engineer, an astronaut, but whatever meaning or significance these terms had once held had become as obscure as everything else.” (Kiefer 143)
The Infinite Tides is very much a coming-down-to-earth story for its protagonist, prodigy astronaut Keith Corcoran. After he receives terrible news during his big space mission, it takes 3 months for him to be transferred back home. Keith, once a great, gifted individual, is now having to live in an empty house and deal with being indefinitely grounded from work until he sorts out his life. Christian Kiefer’s work takes the reader on the same ride alongside Corcoran, experiencing not just the current events but shifting back and forth from Keith's experiences in space, Earth, the past, and the present in a series of unpredictable and terrible waves. But the through-line between these disparate parts is an exploration of the collapse of normality and the volatile systems of the universe that conflict with a narrow mechanical view of the world.
Written in the wake of the great recession of the late 2000s, The Infinite Tides punctually describes the kind of man whose world was swept up in a great disaster. The novel aptly demonstrates the perspective of this kind of person through its imagery. Depictions of American suburbia and urban living are common images in the work. Keith goes about his day with an almost automated sense to it, piling scenes into a collection of words almost devoid of emotion. But the novel takes many opportunities to delve into more detailed and graphic depictions of mathematics and space, which contrast with the mundanity of everyday life, with a kind of energy that mimics Keith’s own obsession with mathematical concepts that underlie the world. “Even as the perfect lines continued: not parallel or convergent but rather diverging so subtly their distance would be impossible to mark or measure, the lines moving away, moving away from each other … And you would not find their intersection even were you to plot those thin vectors for all your days to come.” (Kiefer 123). Keith’s situation is a reproduction of what many men experience when they fall on hard times, as traditional masculinity builds the man around the work that he does, but in the course of life, man doesn’t always have a stable position. The colorful episodes of imagery serve as a respite but usually devolve into acknowledging that these equations can never really fit in the type of world Keith resides in now. The more mechanical parts of the text, and especially the graphic portions, hide the amount of bewilderment, alienation, and distress Keith feels behind large collections of data.
Keith’s actions, from his affairs with others to painting a house that he only looks forward to selling, all serve to further shun the conflict inside of him to a deeper recess of his mind. “Even now he remained the same, if all he could think to do was paint this empty house. It was an absurd way to pass the time, and he knew that. Of course he did. It was pathetic, and it was not even serving its true purpose.” (Kiefer 36). Keith does not do much physically; instead, the novel's main process is him placing blocks that help him build an understanding of what happened in his life. However, the more mundane parts of his day, managing the house and shallow interactions with neighbors, only replicate the actions that destroyed his life in the first place: abandoning his connection to earth through busy work rather than engaging in meaningful relationships. His mind is often on other things than current reality, but he knows if he were to ever look into his current position, he would only find questions that he may not or should not want to answer. “Do you feel sad? Yes. What do you want to do about that? I can think of no way to answer that. Do you think the migraines are related to how you feel? I don’t know. Did you want to talk about anything else? Not really. Are we done? He could not imagine the purpose of this line of questioning and so could not imagine any words that could provide an answer.” (Kiefer 39). But in the course of the plot, he eventually has to face many striking revelations that bring him back to the unsolved questions that only harm him. But in the face of all of this, he returns to his drifting schedule while keeping his mind preoccupied.
This novel lacks a certain amount of emotion in its own standard prose. At first glance, the book seems to be just as dry as Keith’s personality, pages full of mechanical descriptions of events, cul-de-sacs, the trouble of selling houses, and short bursts of realistic dialogue. But there is enough sprinkling of rich mathematical imagery, as mentioned before, alongside a faint glimmer of Keith’s emotions tucked in between the noise of modern life to engage the reader to continue pressing on. The novel plays with its perspective just as it does many other literary aspects. Not just in the timeline of events presented, but in the shift from detached observer to emotional participant. From the outlines of bisects and garages to contemplations on one’s smallness and lack of knowledge and the feelings of deep hurt and longing. A good example is the numerous “My god.” that are written as that breach in Keith’s mental walls, a hole slammed in during any events of epiphany in a weirdly perspective-shifting change from 3rd to first person. “My god. Tell me about your cheerleading competitions now, and I promise I will listen as no other father has ever listened to a daughter.” (Kiefer 259). Slowly but surely, the walls that hide Keith the man from Keith the astronaut are broken as the facade of his suburban living reveals itself as nothing more than a holding area.
In between the parts of the novel, the intervals that look back on Keith’s life help elevate the story’s emotional aspects, as they allow the reader to connect closer and closer to Keith. The reader is not given all the parts of the equation for Keith right from the beginning, as spoiling the past so early would hurt the emotional climax set up, as the inciting incident of his woes is revealed at the last interval before the final part of the novel ties up Keith's emotional journey. Instead, by withholding that information until necessary, what emerges at the end is a masterful arc that explores the narrow and goal-driven, traditionally successful man who now has to contend with the fact that even with his academic prowess, the world is a spiraling amount of data he cannot fully control, and his own emotions are not something he just moves on from. While the genius interlocking of structure, imagery, and perspective helps paint the fine corners of Keith’s mind, the lack of emotion and care for anything beyond Keith’s simplistic perspective may be a detriment to the novel’s own themes of overcoming those obstacles.
There are several weak points in Keith’s arc that more relate to the world he is situated in. Due to the limited 3d person perspective that solely follows Keith like another personality, the characters that make up Keith’s journey are lacking in the depth that Keith has sole billing for. His neighbors and coworkers, due to having to serve a certain function to that arc, have their own selves sometimes reduced to caricatures of people. A common criticism of the novel is its cynical outlook on women, especially because the major figures mostly serve only to emotionally manipulate Keith in his arc without any more exploration of their own whys. Keith’s wife, Barb, in particular, is often just an angry voice on the phone that just stirs up Keith’s inner conflict. But due to the perspective of the novel, the reader sees Barb as unrelatable because of that perspective's closer connection to Keith, serving as blinders to other people’s troubles. Though a male neighbor, Peter, is sufficiently fleshed out due to his nightly conversations with Keith on a personal basis, Peter’s own troubles closely match the instability of Keith’s own life. But Peter only works because we know so much about Keith that we can also relate to Peter in the same way. But beyond the Keith-Peter connection, there isn’t much meaningful space dedicated to anyone other than Keith. People in Keith’s life simply pass by with only a few hangers-on that serve as pestering reminders of Keith’s troubles. In a novel so focused on moving beyond a single personal trajectory for oneself, it seems more than content to only trail around this singular type of individual personified in Keith and Peter.
The Infinite Tides both pulls and repels with its type of stylistic writing. The slow and careful, chosen usage of imagery and the deep, biting wounds represented by the past and thoughts of Keith that slowly spill out capture Keith totally. But it is this exact frame of reference point that suffocates the reader. The mechanical and unemotional portions of the novel, while hiding the places where Keith the man lies, have no space left for the discussion of others. The novel is so dead set on building this that it forgets its own messages at points by devolving into that same disconnected state that Keith battles so much. The text is intentionally meandering to represent the kind of lifestyle Keith is now stuck in. But even as it moves through that hardship, the novel delivers a satisfying central message, even if it doesn't replace that emptiness with something fulfilling. Keith, and the parts of his past and character he hides, keep the reader intrigued about the potential paths back to something tangible and real to hold on to in his life. But in both the achievements and failings of the novel, there is the prime point that one should not be looking at life in a simple, pigeonholed way, ignoring parts of life beyond one's sight. People like Keith believe in life as having clear stages with starting and ending points, but life is not a simple beginning, middle, and end but rather a cycle of many different questions and constant conflicts. Life is a tide of many, with all the ebbs and flows that occur in a world full of cacophony. We find that the best things to hold on to in these storms are not one’s profession, property, or presumptions, but the celestial patterns in the black void of space, the constellations, the ties between figures that still shine.
The Infinite Tides is very much a coming-down-to-earth story for its protagonist, prodigy astronaut Keith Corcoran. After he receives terrible news during his big space mission, it takes 3 months for him to be transferred back home. Keith, once a great, gifted individual, is now having to live in an empty house and deal with being indefinitely grounded from work until he sorts out his life. Christian Kiefer’s work takes the reader on the same ride alongside Corcoran, experiencing not just the current events but shifting back and forth from Keith's experiences in space, Earth, the past, and the present in a series of unpredictable and terrible waves. But the through-line between these disparate parts is an exploration of the collapse of normality and the volatile systems of the universe that conflict with a narrow mechanical view of the world.
Written in the wake of the great recession of the late 2000s, The Infinite Tides punctually describes the kind of man whose world was swept up in a great disaster. The novel aptly demonstrates the perspective of this kind of person through its imagery. Depictions of American suburbia and urban living are common images in the work. Keith goes about his day with an almost automated sense to it, piling scenes into a collection of words almost devoid of emotion. But the novel takes many opportunities to delve into more detailed and graphic depictions of mathematics and space, which contrast with the mundanity of everyday life, with a kind of energy that mimics Keith’s own obsession with mathematical concepts that underlie the world. “Even as the perfect lines continued: not parallel or convergent but rather diverging so subtly their distance would be impossible to mark or measure, the lines moving away, moving away from each other … And you would not find their intersection even were you to plot those thin vectors for all your days to come.” (Kiefer 123). Keith’s situation is a reproduction of what many men experience when they fall on hard times, as traditional masculinity builds the man around the work that he does, but in the course of life, man doesn’t always have a stable position. The colorful episodes of imagery serve as a respite but usually devolve into acknowledging that these equations can never really fit in the type of world Keith resides in now. The more mechanical parts of the text, and especially the graphic portions, hide the amount of bewilderment, alienation, and distress Keith feels behind large collections of data.
Keith’s actions, from his affairs with others to painting a house that he only looks forward to selling, all serve to further shun the conflict inside of him to a deeper recess of his mind. “Even now he remained the same, if all he could think to do was paint this empty house. It was an absurd way to pass the time, and he knew that. Of course he did. It was pathetic, and it was not even serving its true purpose.” (Kiefer 36). Keith does not do much physically; instead, the novel's main process is him placing blocks that help him build an understanding of what happened in his life. However, the more mundane parts of his day, managing the house and shallow interactions with neighbors, only replicate the actions that destroyed his life in the first place: abandoning his connection to earth through busy work rather than engaging in meaningful relationships. His mind is often on other things than current reality, but he knows if he were to ever look into his current position, he would only find questions that he may not or should not want to answer. “Do you feel sad? Yes. What do you want to do about that? I can think of no way to answer that. Do you think the migraines are related to how you feel? I don’t know. Did you want to talk about anything else? Not really. Are we done? He could not imagine the purpose of this line of questioning and so could not imagine any words that could provide an answer.” (Kiefer 39). But in the course of the plot, he eventually has to face many striking revelations that bring him back to the unsolved questions that only harm him. But in the face of all of this, he returns to his drifting schedule while keeping his mind preoccupied.
This novel lacks a certain amount of emotion in its own standard prose. At first glance, the book seems to be just as dry as Keith’s personality, pages full of mechanical descriptions of events, cul-de-sacs, the trouble of selling houses, and short bursts of realistic dialogue. But there is enough sprinkling of rich mathematical imagery, as mentioned before, alongside a faint glimmer of Keith’s emotions tucked in between the noise of modern life to engage the reader to continue pressing on. The novel plays with its perspective just as it does many other literary aspects. Not just in the timeline of events presented, but in the shift from detached observer to emotional participant. From the outlines of bisects and garages to contemplations on one’s smallness and lack of knowledge and the feelings of deep hurt and longing. A good example is the numerous “My god.” that are written as that breach in Keith’s mental walls, a hole slammed in during any events of epiphany in a weirdly perspective-shifting change from 3rd to first person. “My god. Tell me about your cheerleading competitions now, and I promise I will listen as no other father has ever listened to a daughter.” (Kiefer 259). Slowly but surely, the walls that hide Keith the man from Keith the astronaut are broken as the facade of his suburban living reveals itself as nothing more than a holding area.
In between the parts of the novel, the intervals that look back on Keith’s life help elevate the story’s emotional aspects, as they allow the reader to connect closer and closer to Keith. The reader is not given all the parts of the equation for Keith right from the beginning, as spoiling the past so early would hurt the emotional climax set up, as the inciting incident of his woes is revealed at the last interval before the final part of the novel ties up Keith's emotional journey. Instead, by withholding that information until necessary, what emerges at the end is a masterful arc that explores the narrow and goal-driven, traditionally successful man who now has to contend with the fact that even with his academic prowess, the world is a spiraling amount of data he cannot fully control, and his own emotions are not something he just moves on from. While the genius interlocking of structure, imagery, and perspective helps paint the fine corners of Keith’s mind, the lack of emotion and care for anything beyond Keith’s simplistic perspective may be a detriment to the novel’s own themes of overcoming those obstacles.
There are several weak points in Keith’s arc that more relate to the world he is situated in. Due to the limited 3d person perspective that solely follows Keith like another personality, the characters that make up Keith’s journey are lacking in the depth that Keith has sole billing for. His neighbors and coworkers, due to having to serve a certain function to that arc, have their own selves sometimes reduced to caricatures of people. A common criticism of the novel is its cynical outlook on women, especially because the major figures mostly serve only to emotionally manipulate Keith in his arc without any more exploration of their own whys. Keith’s wife, Barb, in particular, is often just an angry voice on the phone that just stirs up Keith’s inner conflict. But due to the perspective of the novel, the reader sees Barb as unrelatable because of that perspective's closer connection to Keith, serving as blinders to other people’s troubles. Though a male neighbor, Peter, is sufficiently fleshed out due to his nightly conversations with Keith on a personal basis, Peter’s own troubles closely match the instability of Keith’s own life. But Peter only works because we know so much about Keith that we can also relate to Peter in the same way. But beyond the Keith-Peter connection, there isn’t much meaningful space dedicated to anyone other than Keith. People in Keith’s life simply pass by with only a few hangers-on that serve as pestering reminders of Keith’s troubles. In a novel so focused on moving beyond a single personal trajectory for oneself, it seems more than content to only trail around this singular type of individual personified in Keith and Peter.
The Infinite Tides both pulls and repels with its type of stylistic writing. The slow and careful, chosen usage of imagery and the deep, biting wounds represented by the past and thoughts of Keith that slowly spill out capture Keith totally. But it is this exact frame of reference point that suffocates the reader. The mechanical and unemotional portions of the novel, while hiding the places where Keith the man lies, have no space left for the discussion of others. The novel is so dead set on building this that it forgets its own messages at points by devolving into that same disconnected state that Keith battles so much. The text is intentionally meandering to represent the kind of lifestyle Keith is now stuck in. But even as it moves through that hardship, the novel delivers a satisfying central message, even if it doesn't replace that emptiness with something fulfilling. Keith, and the parts of his past and character he hides, keep the reader intrigued about the potential paths back to something tangible and real to hold on to in his life. But in both the achievements and failings of the novel, there is the prime point that one should not be looking at life in a simple, pigeonholed way, ignoring parts of life beyond one's sight. People like Keith believe in life as having clear stages with starting and ending points, but life is not a simple beginning, middle, and end but rather a cycle of many different questions and constant conflicts. Life is a tide of many, with all the ebbs and flows that occur in a world full of cacophony. We find that the best things to hold on to in these storms are not one’s profession, property, or presumptions, but the celestial patterns in the black void of space, the constellations, the ties between figures that still shine.
May 13, 2012
Keith Corcoran has known that he's wanted to become an astronaut for as long as he can remember. He has a goal and he follows his trajectory until he makes it. There is no word like failure in his personal dictionary. He has goals and when he makes them he attains them. A graduate of Princeton, he goes on for his Ph.D. in mathematics and engineering and it's not long before he's hired on with NASA and goes through official astronaut training. Meanwhile, he has a wife, Barb, and a daughter, Quinn, who do not live with him in Houston while he trains. He tries to go back to see them every weekend but this plan falters and he gets back every other week, then every three weeks and then once a month if he's lucky. He becomes more and more distant to his family, especially Quinn, the daughter who he loves.
Finally he gets to go into space. While in space he gets the horrible news that his seventeen year-old daughter, Quinn, has died in an automobile accident. Shortly afterwards, Barb tells him that she is leaving him. He is not one to show emotions very well but he starts developing migraines of horrible severity which jeopardize his mission. It is three months until NASA can get him back to earth and he has to watch Quinn's funeral on DVD which NASA taped for him.
Keith has always thought that Quinn was just like him but only better, a natural mathematician who would go to a special high school academy and excel in math. Instead, Quinn chooses to go to a regular high school and becomes a cheer leader, not wanting to go to the 'nerd' school. She likes the things that teenagers like - cell phones, music, clubs, and has a boyfriend. Keith is unhappy with her and the very last conversation they had before she died, he told her he was disappointed with her. No longer was she the little girl who saw colors in numbers like he did, the girl with a plan. She was floundering - being a typical seventeen year-old. Keith wants her to have a plan, be like him and strive for something in the future.
Keith is put on medical leave after his mission and he goes back to his cul-de-sac where Barb has cleared out all of his personal possessions, leaving only a table and chairs and a sofa. He has a psychiatrist who tells him all the time that he sounds angry but Keith does not understand what the psychiatrist means as he doesn't 'feel' angry. He thinks of Quinn but he has not begun the real mourning process. His life feels empty but he does not dwell on anything in particular. He begins an affair with a randy neighbor who, it turns out, is married to the man that Barb left Keith for. Barb keeps calling Keith to the point that Keith has his phone number changed. She wants some money to live on but Keith cleans out their bank accounts and leaves Barb without a source of income.
Keith takes walks into the field behind the cul-de-sac at night and runs into a Ukranian immigrant named Peter who is an astronomer by hobby. He used to work as a tech assistant in a huge astronomical station in the Ukraine. He has a telescope and together they look at the stars and universes. Keith even brings his sofa to the vacant lot and they drink beer and smoke some pot as they look at the heavens. Peter becomes a real friend to Keith.
The story is beautifully written but it lacks the ability to really touch me in the ways that I believe the author meant to. I know that Keith has an internal grief that is paralyzing him but I just don't get to really feel it until the very end of the novel. I understand that he is floundering, that he can't put words to what he feels, that he is in real pain, but something is missing in the dialogue that makes the book seem a bit distant.
The end of the book is beautifully rendered and is worth reading just for that. His friendship with Peter blossoms and, through connection, Keith finds himself and learns to express his feelings. This is Christian Kiefer's first novel and it is a lovely one, filled with passion and angst. I look forward to his future writing which I will be sure to read.
Finally he gets to go into space. While in space he gets the horrible news that his seventeen year-old daughter, Quinn, has died in an automobile accident. Shortly afterwards, Barb tells him that she is leaving him. He is not one to show emotions very well but he starts developing migraines of horrible severity which jeopardize his mission. It is three months until NASA can get him back to earth and he has to watch Quinn's funeral on DVD which NASA taped for him.
Keith has always thought that Quinn was just like him but only better, a natural mathematician who would go to a special high school academy and excel in math. Instead, Quinn chooses to go to a regular high school and becomes a cheer leader, not wanting to go to the 'nerd' school. She likes the things that teenagers like - cell phones, music, clubs, and has a boyfriend. Keith is unhappy with her and the very last conversation they had before she died, he told her he was disappointed with her. No longer was she the little girl who saw colors in numbers like he did, the girl with a plan. She was floundering - being a typical seventeen year-old. Keith wants her to have a plan, be like him and strive for something in the future.
Keith is put on medical leave after his mission and he goes back to his cul-de-sac where Barb has cleared out all of his personal possessions, leaving only a table and chairs and a sofa. He has a psychiatrist who tells him all the time that he sounds angry but Keith does not understand what the psychiatrist means as he doesn't 'feel' angry. He thinks of Quinn but he has not begun the real mourning process. His life feels empty but he does not dwell on anything in particular. He begins an affair with a randy neighbor who, it turns out, is married to the man that Barb left Keith for. Barb keeps calling Keith to the point that Keith has his phone number changed. She wants some money to live on but Keith cleans out their bank accounts and leaves Barb without a source of income.
Keith takes walks into the field behind the cul-de-sac at night and runs into a Ukranian immigrant named Peter who is an astronomer by hobby. He used to work as a tech assistant in a huge astronomical station in the Ukraine. He has a telescope and together they look at the stars and universes. Keith even brings his sofa to the vacant lot and they drink beer and smoke some pot as they look at the heavens. Peter becomes a real friend to Keith.
The story is beautifully written but it lacks the ability to really touch me in the ways that I believe the author meant to. I know that Keith has an internal grief that is paralyzing him but I just don't get to really feel it until the very end of the novel. I understand that he is floundering, that he can't put words to what he feels, that he is in real pain, but something is missing in the dialogue that makes the book seem a bit distant.
The end of the book is beautifully rendered and is worth reading just for that. His friendship with Peter blossoms and, through connection, Keith finds himself and learns to express his feelings. This is Christian Kiefer's first novel and it is a lovely one, filled with passion and angst. I look forward to his future writing which I will be sure to read.
July 3, 2013
The main character of this debut is an astronaut and engineer who attains his life's goal when he boards the International Space Station, where he will install and test a component that he designed. But during Keith's months-long mission, a tragedy strikes his family back home. When he is finally able to return to Earth, he's confronted with an empty shell of his old life. Keith longs to be back in orbit, where he was fully occupied with his work and the happiest he'd ever been. Instead he's aimless for the first time, and what's left of his life keeps unraveling further.
As you might expect, this is a fairly depressing story overall, but it's full of moments that are amusing and even hilarious. Keith isn't great at interacting with people and would prefer to stay out of everyone else's way, but he meets several neighbors who drag him into their own complicated lives. The characters are all well developed and fascinating, especially Keith. I really felt for him as he struggles with grief and anger and a desire to lose himself again in his love of numbers, the only things that make sense.
This is a character-focused novel in which not a lot happens, but that's by design. Christian Kiefer was one of the staff members at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, where I had the opportunity to meet him and hear him talk about his book. He described it this way (paraphrased from my notes): "It's about a man living in a cul de sac, and almost the whole book takes place in his empty house in an unfinished neighborhood, or in Starbucks. Previously he was orbiting Earth, going in circles. Every day is the same, like in the movie Groundhog Day. He doesn't know what to do with himself every day. But other things are poking in, more and more as the story goes along, and by the end he is longing for the days when he had nothing to do."
THE INFINITE TIDES shares several elements with SHINE SHINE SHINE by Lydia Netzer, which I raved about last year, though the two are very different in tone. I asked Kiefer if he'd read Netzer's novel, and he said the two of them had become friends and critique partners because of their books. I love the idea of two novelists I admire looking over each other's work. THE INFINITE TIDES is another strong recommendation, and Kiefer is another writer I can't wait to read more from.
As you might expect, this is a fairly depressing story overall, but it's full of moments that are amusing and even hilarious. Keith isn't great at interacting with people and would prefer to stay out of everyone else's way, but he meets several neighbors who drag him into their own complicated lives. The characters are all well developed and fascinating, especially Keith. I really felt for him as he struggles with grief and anger and a desire to lose himself again in his love of numbers, the only things that make sense.
This is a character-focused novel in which not a lot happens, but that's by design. Christian Kiefer was one of the staff members at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, where I had the opportunity to meet him and hear him talk about his book. He described it this way (paraphrased from my notes): "It's about a man living in a cul de sac, and almost the whole book takes place in his empty house in an unfinished neighborhood, or in Starbucks. Previously he was orbiting Earth, going in circles. Every day is the same, like in the movie Groundhog Day. He doesn't know what to do with himself every day. But other things are poking in, more and more as the story goes along, and by the end he is longing for the days when he had nothing to do."
THE INFINITE TIDES shares several elements with SHINE SHINE SHINE by Lydia Netzer, which I raved about last year, though the two are very different in tone. I asked Kiefer if he'd read Netzer's novel, and he said the two of them had become friends and critique partners because of their books. I love the idea of two novelists I admire looking over each other's work. THE INFINITE TIDES is another strong recommendation, and Kiefer is another writer I can't wait to read more from.
October 7, 2026
As more and more people today seem unredeemably overcome by general uncertainty and almost all headlines coming out from both our administration and major news organizations seem to be spelling out the same preordained future of doom, division, and higher costs of everything, The Infinite Tides by Christian Kiefer, released in 2012, provides a stark but not too dissimilar view into post-recession America coupled with the same premise of uncertainty that is currently making rounds from person to person like the plague. Wherever you look now, you’ll find commonality between the story of recently grounded and grieving astronaut Keith Corcoran and the average man in America, and to some it may even evoke a feeling of kindred struggle. But, despite being a well-written venture into the binary mind of one grappling with an unsolvable equation, and a promising entrance to a clearly talented author’s bibliography, The Infinite Tides ultimately falters in a throughline execution of its themes through a half-hearted line of progression and flimsy definition of its characters.
What is quite possibly The Infinite Tides’ greatest strength (and later to its detriment, weakness) is its premise of unrelenting grief. The Infinite Tides follows previously mentioned astronaut Keith Corcoran who, after fulfilling his life dream of becoming one, returns to a planet where seemingly everything has been pulled out from under him, with his wife admitting to infidelity, his daughter dying in a car crash, and his role as an astronaut now in question. Now Keith is faced with a situation entirely out of his area of expertise and is left to pick up the pieces in an effort to “move through.”
It is an admittedly superb premise and Kiefer does well to illustrate how the mind of someone like Keith Corcoran, someone whose first love in life has always and will always be mathematics—someone who processes his emotions more like machine than man—would reason through the unprocessable pain of losing so much in so little time. Through an objective lens, the story succeeds in immersing the reader into Keith’s mental space and all the more manages to be beautifully written on top of that, with scenes such as Keith first witnessing the vastness of space, his daughter’s funeral, and the tides coming in being standout examples of Kiefer’s proficiency in his prose.
“It was only a single moment and then the numbers fell into their places once again. His heart ascatter in his chest. The robotic arm he had designed. The tangent of theta. Pi over two. Sine equals one… and it already seemed like something that had occurred in a dream, as if he had been sleeping or had slept and had imagined the thinking of some other man… What was he doing here? What were any of them doing out here at all?” (Infinite Tides, p. 51)
Additionally, there is almost a paradoxical element to the story’s narration that enriches the tragedy of Keith’s emotional disconnect, where genuinely heartfelt scenes are made even more so strictly because Keith struggles to connect, and helps ground a character who, in the hands of lesser writers, would be tough to empathize with.
When it comes to Keith's characterization, there is no wasted element as almost all aspects that make up the book serve to flesh it out. The narration which limits us to Keith in similar manner to how limited he is to himself in interaction, the mundane, “dead-end” feeling of the cul-de-sac which is constantly redescribed and retread as if Keith is reminding himself of his circumstances in disbelief. The widespread apathy and hopelessness that appears in both many of the adults Keith talks to but in their greater world at large, all of it helps make The Infinite Tides feel like Keith’s story, and—however unintentional—connect the world to modern day with its sentiment of apathy, which seems more prevalent now than ever before. But, when it comes to the characterization of everyone else, the succinctness that was present in Keith’s does not match, and the standard starts to fall apart.
To give Kiefer credit, characters like Peter and Luda do measure up to Keith’s writing, which is great considering Peter and Keith’s friendship is the centerpiece event moving the plot forward, but everyone else, most damningly being Keith’s own daughter, are put to the wayside as the audience continues to receive different but similar scenes which spell out the same conclusion about Keith that the audience had already figured back in chapter one.
I’ve seen it said before that many of the book’s female characters are written with much less care and purpose than those who are male, and I’m inclined to agree. Keith’s neighbor, Jennifer, though being a somewhat serviceable parallel of Keith and his anger, has no real character other than providing drama to the story, and I say this despite massively enjoying the drama she provides to it, simply because it was something that had significantly progressed the story’s plot. There was only one scene where Jennifer was interesting as a character, interesting enough to warrant discussion, and that was her very final one.
Barbara, Keith’s recently divorced wife, is much worse. She’s someone who should intimately understand the grief Keith is grappling with and someone who has had a lifetime to at least begin to understand Keith, yet we rarely get her perspective on anything and after a certain point, even the plot makes the effort to ignore her.
But, out of all these characters, the most disappointing has to be Keith’s daughter, Quinn.
Quinn is the main conflict of the story and the relationship between her and Keith, father and daughter, is its heart, soul, and greatest wound. Because it’s not just about who she was that matters but how Keith responds to her death that matters as well. It’s through Keith’s current actions that his love, his grief, and everything that he felt about his daughter should become clear. We should be seeing vestiges of Quinn whenever Keith does anything, and therein lies the problem.
Keith, for chapters at a time, is too passive a protagonist to warrant that label. The parallel between Jennifer and Keith rings hollow when Keith hasn’t shown nearly as much anger tantamount to Jennifer’s, and the parallel between Keith and Peter, their bond formed through mutual misery, is one sided because Keith has not sabotaged his life nearly enough. At multiple points, Kiefer is more content telling the reader of what Keith is instead of showing it and pulls his punches far too often.
Though definitely well written and to some extent doing what it set out to do, The Infinite Tides still only does a fraction of what it could’ve and falls into a trap many debut novels do, where an author starting out is out to prove their merit and subsequently puts more effort into the wordplay and structure than following through on their promises, and though Kiefer is definitely skilled and I greatly look forward to reviewing his other works, The Infinite Tides is ultimately a monument to wasted potential, where almost all the cards starting out quietly disappear as a lingering feeling of loss remains. This interstellar bound story unfortunately fails to deliver on its interesting premise and as a result doesn’t do enough that is interesting with it.
What is quite possibly The Infinite Tides’ greatest strength (and later to its detriment, weakness) is its premise of unrelenting grief. The Infinite Tides follows previously mentioned astronaut Keith Corcoran who, after fulfilling his life dream of becoming one, returns to a planet where seemingly everything has been pulled out from under him, with his wife admitting to infidelity, his daughter dying in a car crash, and his role as an astronaut now in question. Now Keith is faced with a situation entirely out of his area of expertise and is left to pick up the pieces in an effort to “move through.”
It is an admittedly superb premise and Kiefer does well to illustrate how the mind of someone like Keith Corcoran, someone whose first love in life has always and will always be mathematics—someone who processes his emotions more like machine than man—would reason through the unprocessable pain of losing so much in so little time. Through an objective lens, the story succeeds in immersing the reader into Keith’s mental space and all the more manages to be beautifully written on top of that, with scenes such as Keith first witnessing the vastness of space, his daughter’s funeral, and the tides coming in being standout examples of Kiefer’s proficiency in his prose.
“It was only a single moment and then the numbers fell into their places once again. His heart ascatter in his chest. The robotic arm he had designed. The tangent of theta. Pi over two. Sine equals one… and it already seemed like something that had occurred in a dream, as if he had been sleeping or had slept and had imagined the thinking of some other man… What was he doing here? What were any of them doing out here at all?” (Infinite Tides, p. 51)
Additionally, there is almost a paradoxical element to the story’s narration that enriches the tragedy of Keith’s emotional disconnect, where genuinely heartfelt scenes are made even more so strictly because Keith struggles to connect, and helps ground a character who, in the hands of lesser writers, would be tough to empathize with.
When it comes to Keith's characterization, there is no wasted element as almost all aspects that make up the book serve to flesh it out. The narration which limits us to Keith in similar manner to how limited he is to himself in interaction, the mundane, “dead-end” feeling of the cul-de-sac which is constantly redescribed and retread as if Keith is reminding himself of his circumstances in disbelief. The widespread apathy and hopelessness that appears in both many of the adults Keith talks to but in their greater world at large, all of it helps make The Infinite Tides feel like Keith’s story, and—however unintentional—connect the world to modern day with its sentiment of apathy, which seems more prevalent now than ever before. But, when it comes to the characterization of everyone else, the succinctness that was present in Keith’s does not match, and the standard starts to fall apart.
To give Kiefer credit, characters like Peter and Luda do measure up to Keith’s writing, which is great considering Peter and Keith’s friendship is the centerpiece event moving the plot forward, but everyone else, most damningly being Keith’s own daughter, are put to the wayside as the audience continues to receive different but similar scenes which spell out the same conclusion about Keith that the audience had already figured back in chapter one.
I’ve seen it said before that many of the book’s female characters are written with much less care and purpose than those who are male, and I’m inclined to agree. Keith’s neighbor, Jennifer, though being a somewhat serviceable parallel of Keith and his anger, has no real character other than providing drama to the story, and I say this despite massively enjoying the drama she provides to it, simply because it was something that had significantly progressed the story’s plot. There was only one scene where Jennifer was interesting as a character, interesting enough to warrant discussion, and that was her very final one.
Barbara, Keith’s recently divorced wife, is much worse. She’s someone who should intimately understand the grief Keith is grappling with and someone who has had a lifetime to at least begin to understand Keith, yet we rarely get her perspective on anything and after a certain point, even the plot makes the effort to ignore her.
But, out of all these characters, the most disappointing has to be Keith’s daughter, Quinn.
Quinn is the main conflict of the story and the relationship between her and Keith, father and daughter, is its heart, soul, and greatest wound. Because it’s not just about who she was that matters but how Keith responds to her death that matters as well. It’s through Keith’s current actions that his love, his grief, and everything that he felt about his daughter should become clear. We should be seeing vestiges of Quinn whenever Keith does anything, and therein lies the problem.
Keith, for chapters at a time, is too passive a protagonist to warrant that label. The parallel between Jennifer and Keith rings hollow when Keith hasn’t shown nearly as much anger tantamount to Jennifer’s, and the parallel between Keith and Peter, their bond formed through mutual misery, is one sided because Keith has not sabotaged his life nearly enough. At multiple points, Kiefer is more content telling the reader of what Keith is instead of showing it and pulls his punches far too often.
Though definitely well written and to some extent doing what it set out to do, The Infinite Tides still only does a fraction of what it could’ve and falls into a trap many debut novels do, where an author starting out is out to prove their merit and subsequently puts more effort into the wordplay and structure than following through on their promises, and though Kiefer is definitely skilled and I greatly look forward to reviewing his other works, The Infinite Tides is ultimately a monument to wasted potential, where almost all the cards starting out quietly disappear as a lingering feeling of loss remains. This interstellar bound story unfortunately fails to deliver on its interesting premise and as a result doesn’t do enough that is interesting with it.
October 7, 2026
“Everything you have ever known will one day rise like smoke. The dreams and desires you have had or will have” (Chapter 19). For Keith Corcoran, life is supposed to function like an equation. You make the right choices, put in the work, and arrive at the right answer. He figures his life will be complete once he becomes an astronaut, and most other things seem like distractions. Yet, can anything in this world be that simple? The Infinite Tides by Christian Kiefer follows a talented astronaut who reaches his dream only to find that his life has become something he cannot make sense of. While he is experiencing the pinnacle moment of his life's plan, his daughter passes away. From a point of utter despair, Keith is forced to reconsider the meaning and purpose of his life. This is a book about discovering the meaning of life, not about a man in space. Although its slow pace can sometimes make the story difficult to stay engaged with, The Infinite Tides is ultimately a successful novel because Kiefer develops Keith's search for meaning through his relationships, his need for order, and the equation imagery that follows him throughout the book.
Kiefer makes Keith’s belief in being an astronaut convincing by showing how it developed. He is structured, driven, and determined, almost like how a line of code completes its task. He was a textbook good kid, one always in textbooks. Looking back at his childhood, the narrator explains, “He had never assumed anything about his success but indeed he had come to expect it” (Chapter 2). Keith had always believed his effort would make his success predictable. Being so gifted academically, he set his sights on becoming an astronaut, and through this thinking, channeled his life mission into that goal. In other words, his happiness was waiting for him at the ISS. Every success gave him another reason to trust the process, as to him, he was on an undeniable path towards this goal.
The cost of that focus becomes clearest in his family life. Keith, before the accident, had a wife, Barb, and a daughter, Quinn, but having a family and being a family are two different things. When he returns home, he wonders, “Had the walls been pale yellow when they had first purchased the house or had she painted them while he was away?” (Chapter. 1). For someone so precise about his work, this uncertainty about his own home is revealing. The color of a wall is a small detail, yet Kiefer uses it to make his distance from family visible. Keith has treated having a family as part of being successful, but has not given Barb and Quinn the attention he gives his career. This idea is crucial to the ultimate conflict of the story, and Kiefer handles it well because he shows Keith's failure as a father through small details rather than simply telling the reader he was distant.
Kiefer deepens this contrast through the way he moves between Keith’s past and present self before and after Quinn's death. The opening presents his arrival at the space station, where years of work seem to form “this finally solved equation” (Kiefer, “The Dark Matter”). Chapter 1 then places him back in the empty house, describing his exhaustion as “an equation the sum total of which was zero” (Chapter 1). According to his calculations, reaching space should have made everything worthwhile, yet not an ounce of triumph remained. Keith has encountered variables he never accounted for, and his accomplishment cannot cancel out his loss. Later, memories of the space station interrupt his new life at home, keeping both versions of Keith in view. He has reached his dreams, but must figure out how to live with his new life. This contrast is one of the strongest parts of the book because the equation imagery shows exactly how Keith thinks. He tries to understand both his success and his grief through numbers which makes it clear that even after his life falls apart, he is still relying on the same way of thinking that guided him before.
Furthermore, Keith carries his familiar need for order into this uncertainty, while he is living after the tragedy. Even while preparing the kitchen for painting, he sees “the line of blue tape marking out a set of answers clear and simple and predictable, all things reduced to numbers, angles, vectors, equations” (Chapter 2). When Keith starts thinking about Barb and Quinn, he goes back to repositioning the tape and moving the refrigerator. Kiefer shows him returning to a task he can control whenever thoughts of his family interrupt it, rather than facing what has happened to them.
Furthermore, this is why Keith’s relationships matter so much to his search for purpose. His old way of thinking would tell him to identify the next goal and work towards it, yet that leaves the same problem in place. Luda, the wife of his friend Peter, challenges this habit, for she tells Keith: “Only looking for the next thing to do. You don’t even know where you are and what you have” (Chapter 20). Her words change the question from what Keith might accomplish to what is actually present. By giving that challenge to another character, Kiefer lets us see Keith’s familiar thinking from the outside. To find purpose again and, in a sense, be reborn, Keith has to reconsider what he has been asking for his dreams to provide. This is another reason the book works so well, in that his answers don’t come from himself.
One weakness of the novel is that its focus on Keith’s internal thoughts can make parts of the story feel slow. This is especially noticeable in Chapter 2, with the detailed preparation for painting the kitchen, and at the start of Chapter 7, when Keith keeps putting off painting and going to Starbucks instead. At times, this makes the book drag and some scenes could have been abridged. However, I also think some of this is intentional. Keith himself is detached and almost moving through life automatically, so the slow pace puts the reader into that same state. The repetition helps show how stuck Keith is, but some of these scenes could be shorter without losing that point.
Overall, The Infinite Tides is a very good book and successfully explores the meaning of life by making Keith question what once gave his life direction. Christian Kiefer does this especially well through Keith's relationships, his constant need for order, and the equation imagery that follows him throughout the story. Kiefer leaves the reader questioning some of the same things Keith is forced to question about achievement, relationships, and what actually gives a person's life meaning. This story reminds us that we do not have to dream of becoming astronauts to make Keith’s mistake, as chasing a degree, building a career, or frankly anything could write our own stories as Keith’s. For these reasons, I would consider The Infinite Tides a successful novel and one that I personally enjoyed reading, with a few moments that left me teary-eyed.
Kiefer makes Keith’s belief in being an astronaut convincing by showing how it developed. He is structured, driven, and determined, almost like how a line of code completes its task. He was a textbook good kid, one always in textbooks. Looking back at his childhood, the narrator explains, “He had never assumed anything about his success but indeed he had come to expect it” (Chapter 2). Keith had always believed his effort would make his success predictable. Being so gifted academically, he set his sights on becoming an astronaut, and through this thinking, channeled his life mission into that goal. In other words, his happiness was waiting for him at the ISS. Every success gave him another reason to trust the process, as to him, he was on an undeniable path towards this goal.
The cost of that focus becomes clearest in his family life. Keith, before the accident, had a wife, Barb, and a daughter, Quinn, but having a family and being a family are two different things. When he returns home, he wonders, “Had the walls been pale yellow when they had first purchased the house or had she painted them while he was away?” (Chapter. 1). For someone so precise about his work, this uncertainty about his own home is revealing. The color of a wall is a small detail, yet Kiefer uses it to make his distance from family visible. Keith has treated having a family as part of being successful, but has not given Barb and Quinn the attention he gives his career. This idea is crucial to the ultimate conflict of the story, and Kiefer handles it well because he shows Keith's failure as a father through small details rather than simply telling the reader he was distant.
Kiefer deepens this contrast through the way he moves between Keith’s past and present self before and after Quinn's death. The opening presents his arrival at the space station, where years of work seem to form “this finally solved equation” (Kiefer, “The Dark Matter”). Chapter 1 then places him back in the empty house, describing his exhaustion as “an equation the sum total of which was zero” (Chapter 1). According to his calculations, reaching space should have made everything worthwhile, yet not an ounce of triumph remained. Keith has encountered variables he never accounted for, and his accomplishment cannot cancel out his loss. Later, memories of the space station interrupt his new life at home, keeping both versions of Keith in view. He has reached his dreams, but must figure out how to live with his new life. This contrast is one of the strongest parts of the book because the equation imagery shows exactly how Keith thinks. He tries to understand both his success and his grief through numbers which makes it clear that even after his life falls apart, he is still relying on the same way of thinking that guided him before.
Furthermore, Keith carries his familiar need for order into this uncertainty, while he is living after the tragedy. Even while preparing the kitchen for painting, he sees “the line of blue tape marking out a set of answers clear and simple and predictable, all things reduced to numbers, angles, vectors, equations” (Chapter 2). When Keith starts thinking about Barb and Quinn, he goes back to repositioning the tape and moving the refrigerator. Kiefer shows him returning to a task he can control whenever thoughts of his family interrupt it, rather than facing what has happened to them.
Furthermore, this is why Keith’s relationships matter so much to his search for purpose. His old way of thinking would tell him to identify the next goal and work towards it, yet that leaves the same problem in place. Luda, the wife of his friend Peter, challenges this habit, for she tells Keith: “Only looking for the next thing to do. You don’t even know where you are and what you have” (Chapter 20). Her words change the question from what Keith might accomplish to what is actually present. By giving that challenge to another character, Kiefer lets us see Keith’s familiar thinking from the outside. To find purpose again and, in a sense, be reborn, Keith has to reconsider what he has been asking for his dreams to provide. This is another reason the book works so well, in that his answers don’t come from himself.
One weakness of the novel is that its focus on Keith’s internal thoughts can make parts of the story feel slow. This is especially noticeable in Chapter 2, with the detailed preparation for painting the kitchen, and at the start of Chapter 7, when Keith keeps putting off painting and going to Starbucks instead. At times, this makes the book drag and some scenes could have been abridged. However, I also think some of this is intentional. Keith himself is detached and almost moving through life automatically, so the slow pace puts the reader into that same state. The repetition helps show how stuck Keith is, but some of these scenes could be shorter without losing that point.
Overall, The Infinite Tides is a very good book and successfully explores the meaning of life by making Keith question what once gave his life direction. Christian Kiefer does this especially well through Keith's relationships, his constant need for order, and the equation imagery that follows him throughout the story. Kiefer leaves the reader questioning some of the same things Keith is forced to question about achievement, relationships, and what actually gives a person's life meaning. This story reminds us that we do not have to dream of becoming astronauts to make Keith’s mistake, as chasing a degree, building a career, or frankly anything could write our own stories as Keith’s. For these reasons, I would consider The Infinite Tides a successful novel and one that I personally enjoyed reading, with a few moments that left me teary-eyed.
October 7, 2026
Dr. Kiefer’s “The Infinite Tides” is a novel that I came to admire in its uniqueness in the way it portrays the personality of its characters, especially in the neurodivergent portrayal of the protagonist. The novel follows Keith Corcoran, an astronaut who has spent most of his life working toward getting into space. He finally makes it, but while he's on the International Space Station, his life back home starts falling apart from grief and his family falling apart. By the time Keith arrived back on Earth, the life he left behind isn't the same. Most of the book is about how grief and change affects his mentality. Keith has always solved problems with math and science, viewing everything in the world akin to mathematics. But grief is one problem of which he can't solve, and it leaves him stuck. It’s as if he views it like those math problems where you conclude; “Solution does not exist.” Kiefer portrays Keith as a man you might sympathize with, but he also gives him traits that make him hard to like. The book has a few weaknesses or hazy parts where I was confused of the point of view of narration, but it's worth reading because Keith is never all good or all bad, and because it shows that his logical intelligence can't fix everything, especially when he could be lacking in emotional intelligence.
Grief and loss of familial structure would be terrible for anyone, and Keith has to deal with it while he's not even on Earth, so it's easy to either sympathize or empathize for him. When he cries on the space station, his tears float in the air in front of his face, and Kiefer describes them as an “unknown constellation” (Kiefer 56). The metaphor fits someone like Keith. He's an astronaut, so he's used to looking at stars and trying to make sense of what he sees, and now his own tears are part of that same world. The image also shows how lost he is. A constellation is usually something people have already mapped and named, but this one is unknown, just like the grief Keith is going through. He can understand space and science, but he can't really understand his own feelings. Kiefer uses space and science images like this throughout the book, and it's one of the things he does best, because it shows Keith's grief instead of just telling you about it.
Another part that makes you feel for Keith is when he thinks about his old life as “a faded ghost scrawl impossible to read” (Kiefer 141). His life used to seem clear to him. He had a career, a wife, and a daughter, and he knew what he was working toward, but after this routine and structure he was used to collapsed, all of that changed. The word “ghost” suggests that he remembers that life existed but can't figure out how to get back to it, which explains why moving forward is so hard for him. The phrase “impossible to read” is notable also, because Keith has spent his whole life making sense of numbers and equations, and now the one thing he can't read is his own past.
At the same time, there are parts of Keith that are hard to like. One of the best examples of this to me is how he treats his daughter Quinn in early chronological moments of the novel. He obviously loves her, but since she shares his love for math, he also seems to care a lot about what he thinks she should become. In one of the book's flashbacks, when she doesn't live up to his expectations, he tells her, “I'm disappointed in you” (Kiefer 293). The words are direct and harsh, and they show that Keith analyzes Quinn in the same way that he measures his own life, by whether she's staying on the path he planned out for her. Keith can also be frustrating because he seems to focus more about his own goals than thinking about the people around him. Being an astronaut is a defining part of his identity, and at at the start, the book describes his life as having a “trajectory” (Kiefer 2). The word fits his job as an astronaut, but it also matches the mathematical ways he thinks, like vectors. A trajectory is a path that can be calculated ahead of time, and that's how Keith sees his own life. He wants everything to have a simple direction and velocity, and he wants to know where he's going and what he's supposed to do next, but people don't work like that. His daughter has her own goals and his wife has her own feelings, and Keith can't control what either of them does.
So to me, the character flaws of Keith actually make him a more interesting character than he would have been if Kiefer had made him completely likable. What happened to Keith is terrible, but it shouldn’t excuse everything he did, and a reader can empathize for him and still think he is to blame for some of his. That's one of the strongest parts of the book, because it makes Keith feel more human, and people are almost always a mixture of good and bad.
Another strength of the novel is how it shows that being smart doesn't solve Keith's biggest problems. He's good at science and math, but none of that can fix his broken family. All of Keith’s life, he has believed that hard work and intelligence can get him to achieve his goals, and after something happened in his family he can’t fix, he's dealing with something that can't be solved that way. His biggest challenge now is learning how to adapt to change.
The novel does have some other slight negatives in storytelling though, since most of it is about Keith dealing with his grief, a lot of the story happens inside his head or in his empty house, and there are moments in the story where nothing important really happens. Keith’s flashbacks do have brief moments of importance, but the slow pace makes the book hard to get through. The other characters also don't get as much depth as Keith, especially his wife, so it's hard to grasp her perspective. However, it could be an intentional aspect of the book because it shows how often Keith ignores other people's feelings. Overall, The Infinite Tides does a good job of confusing the reader on the extent they empathize or sympathize with Keith, which I think makes the novel a lot better in making the reader come up with their own interpretations, just like I did. Sometimes I sympathize with him because he has experienced loss, and other times he makes things worse because of how he treats other people. To me, Kiefer wants you to see both sides of him. Keith is grieving, but he's also responsible for some of the distance between himself and his family, and that makes him more believable. Overall, the book did a good job at grabbing my attention, and it’s well worth the read for me. The book ultimately is about a man who faces unexpected challenges with grief and changes of his family dynamics and has to realize that understanding something isn't always the same as knowing how to deal with it. The slow pace won't work for every reader, but for anyone who wants to analyze and come up with interpretations on characters over a fast paced plot, The Infinite Tides is worth reading.
Grief and loss of familial structure would be terrible for anyone, and Keith has to deal with it while he's not even on Earth, so it's easy to either sympathize or empathize for him. When he cries on the space station, his tears float in the air in front of his face, and Kiefer describes them as an “unknown constellation” (Kiefer 56). The metaphor fits someone like Keith. He's an astronaut, so he's used to looking at stars and trying to make sense of what he sees, and now his own tears are part of that same world. The image also shows how lost he is. A constellation is usually something people have already mapped and named, but this one is unknown, just like the grief Keith is going through. He can understand space and science, but he can't really understand his own feelings. Kiefer uses space and science images like this throughout the book, and it's one of the things he does best, because it shows Keith's grief instead of just telling you about it.
Another part that makes you feel for Keith is when he thinks about his old life as “a faded ghost scrawl impossible to read” (Kiefer 141). His life used to seem clear to him. He had a career, a wife, and a daughter, and he knew what he was working toward, but after this routine and structure he was used to collapsed, all of that changed. The word “ghost” suggests that he remembers that life existed but can't figure out how to get back to it, which explains why moving forward is so hard for him. The phrase “impossible to read” is notable also, because Keith has spent his whole life making sense of numbers and equations, and now the one thing he can't read is his own past.
At the same time, there are parts of Keith that are hard to like. One of the best examples of this to me is how he treats his daughter Quinn in early chronological moments of the novel. He obviously loves her, but since she shares his love for math, he also seems to care a lot about what he thinks she should become. In one of the book's flashbacks, when she doesn't live up to his expectations, he tells her, “I'm disappointed in you” (Kiefer 293). The words are direct and harsh, and they show that Keith analyzes Quinn in the same way that he measures his own life, by whether she's staying on the path he planned out for her. Keith can also be frustrating because he seems to focus more about his own goals than thinking about the people around him. Being an astronaut is a defining part of his identity, and at at the start, the book describes his life as having a “trajectory” (Kiefer 2). The word fits his job as an astronaut, but it also matches the mathematical ways he thinks, like vectors. A trajectory is a path that can be calculated ahead of time, and that's how Keith sees his own life. He wants everything to have a simple direction and velocity, and he wants to know where he's going and what he's supposed to do next, but people don't work like that. His daughter has her own goals and his wife has her own feelings, and Keith can't control what either of them does.
So to me, the character flaws of Keith actually make him a more interesting character than he would have been if Kiefer had made him completely likable. What happened to Keith is terrible, but it shouldn’t excuse everything he did, and a reader can empathize for him and still think he is to blame for some of his. That's one of the strongest parts of the book, because it makes Keith feel more human, and people are almost always a mixture of good and bad.
Another strength of the novel is how it shows that being smart doesn't solve Keith's biggest problems. He's good at science and math, but none of that can fix his broken family. All of Keith’s life, he has believed that hard work and intelligence can get him to achieve his goals, and after something happened in his family he can’t fix, he's dealing with something that can't be solved that way. His biggest challenge now is learning how to adapt to change.
The novel does have some other slight negatives in storytelling though, since most of it is about Keith dealing with his grief, a lot of the story happens inside his head or in his empty house, and there are moments in the story where nothing important really happens. Keith’s flashbacks do have brief moments of importance, but the slow pace makes the book hard to get through. The other characters also don't get as much depth as Keith, especially his wife, so it's hard to grasp her perspective. However, it could be an intentional aspect of the book because it shows how often Keith ignores other people's feelings. Overall, The Infinite Tides does a good job of confusing the reader on the extent they empathize or sympathize with Keith, which I think makes the novel a lot better in making the reader come up with their own interpretations, just like I did. Sometimes I sympathize with him because he has experienced loss, and other times he makes things worse because of how he treats other people. To me, Kiefer wants you to see both sides of him. Keith is grieving, but he's also responsible for some of the distance between himself and his family, and that makes him more believable. Overall, the book did a good job at grabbing my attention, and it’s well worth the read for me. The book ultimately is about a man who faces unexpected challenges with grief and changes of his family dynamics and has to realize that understanding something isn't always the same as knowing how to deal with it. The slow pace won't work for every reader, but for anyone who wants to analyze and come up with interpretations on characters over a fast paced plot, The Infinite Tides is worth reading.
July 4, 2012
he Infinite Tides
By Christian Kiefer
(Bloomsbury; 393 pages; $26)
The poetry of suburbia and space odyssey meet, successfully, in Christian Kiefer's debut novel, "The Infinite Tides." It's the tale of Keith Corcoran, an alienated astronaut who loses his teenage daughter to a car accident and his marriage to the consequences of that tragedy as he floats above the planet, wounded by migraines and Lear-like pain.
Grounded, he faces the reality of an empty ranch house, an empty life and the contemplation of empty days to come. In Kiefer's hands, it's a pitiless and often pitiful account, as Corcoran seeks refuge in the hot arms of a neighbor (whose husband, it turns out, was having an affair with his spouse), and the friendship of an alienated Ukrainian emigre reduced to stacking boxes at Target.
Kiefer's exploration of "the dark matter flowing into and out of your heart," analogous to the Pascalian silence of the skies, is expert and anguished. Sitting in Starbucks, Corcoran reaches for a newspaper "for no reason other than to divert his mind, staring at headlines on foreclosures, the imploding real estate market, the rising price of oil, the increasing unemployment rate. Servicemen captured in Iraq. Bombs in Afghanistan."
The banality of yesterday's papers - and the possibility of a comet hitting the Earth - are immune to the good intentions of the 12 steps his shrink offers. "My daughter's dead," he reflects. "Quinn. My god."
With no deity in sight, he looks up at the heavens through the borrowed telescope of his Ukrainian friend, on a battered sofa the two have dragged out into a field. His friend gets high, he drinks beer. Nothing matters.
Corcoran ultimately finds solace, of a sort, though Kiefer remains resolutely unsentimental. The sky of his fiction is big, and ultimately forgiving. And dark.
- Paul Wilner, books@sfchronicle.com
By Christian Kiefer
(Bloomsbury; 393 pages; $26)
The poetry of suburbia and space odyssey meet, successfully, in Christian Kiefer's debut novel, "The Infinite Tides." It's the tale of Keith Corcoran, an alienated astronaut who loses his teenage daughter to a car accident and his marriage to the consequences of that tragedy as he floats above the planet, wounded by migraines and Lear-like pain.
Grounded, he faces the reality of an empty ranch house, an empty life and the contemplation of empty days to come. In Kiefer's hands, it's a pitiless and often pitiful account, as Corcoran seeks refuge in the hot arms of a neighbor (whose husband, it turns out, was having an affair with his spouse), and the friendship of an alienated Ukrainian emigre reduced to stacking boxes at Target.
Kiefer's exploration of "the dark matter flowing into and out of your heart," analogous to the Pascalian silence of the skies, is expert and anguished. Sitting in Starbucks, Corcoran reaches for a newspaper "for no reason other than to divert his mind, staring at headlines on foreclosures, the imploding real estate market, the rising price of oil, the increasing unemployment rate. Servicemen captured in Iraq. Bombs in Afghanistan."
The banality of yesterday's papers - and the possibility of a comet hitting the Earth - are immune to the good intentions of the 12 steps his shrink offers. "My daughter's dead," he reflects. "Quinn. My god."
With no deity in sight, he looks up at the heavens through the borrowed telescope of his Ukrainian friend, on a battered sofa the two have dragged out into a field. His friend gets high, he drinks beer. Nothing matters.
Corcoran ultimately finds solace, of a sort, though Kiefer remains resolutely unsentimental. The sky of his fiction is big, and ultimately forgiving. And dark.
- Paul Wilner, books@sfchronicle.com
April 26, 2013
So, I haven't decided how I feel about the book yet. I have a lot of random thoughts, so feel free to comment on any, all or none of the following....
Of course I was sad when we found out Keith's daughter died, but the second saddest part for me in the book was when he found out he lost the pictures and personal items of hers in the storage unit. Really sad.
All the adulterous relationships in the story sickened me; however, I thought they were all very real in their depiction in how their selfishness and vengefulness was portrayed. Jennifer's husband creeped me out....well, Jennifer really creeped me out for that matter. She repulsed me as a mother. I really enjoyed it when Keith switched his bank account though...that's the "dark side" of me coming through;)
I thought Keith's responses were all very believable : the death of his daughter, separation from wife, and tough realization that work isn't everything.
It's striking how Keith was so concerned about the future of his daughter, yet he wasn't invested in her current life. Yes, he wanted her to go to a good school but only because that impacted her future. He didn't spend any time with her. That made me sad for him and her.
I liked how the book ended actually. You didn't know what would come of the comet or astroid (or whatever it was), and he was content sitting on the beach.
Overall, it was a sad book with believable responses to situations. I just wish Keith could have realized earlier what is important in life. It makes me wonder what he lives for from here on out. He is literally left with nothing. I am a Christian, so for me, there is something greater to live for. I am sad for people who don't believe that there is something bigger than all of us to live for.
Of course I was sad when we found out Keith's daughter died, but the second saddest part for me in the book was when he found out he lost the pictures and personal items of hers in the storage unit. Really sad.
All the adulterous relationships in the story sickened me; however, I thought they were all very real in their depiction in how their selfishness and vengefulness was portrayed. Jennifer's husband creeped me out....well, Jennifer really creeped me out for that matter. She repulsed me as a mother. I really enjoyed it when Keith switched his bank account though...that's the "dark side" of me coming through;)
I thought Keith's responses were all very believable : the death of his daughter, separation from wife, and tough realization that work isn't everything.
It's striking how Keith was so concerned about the future of his daughter, yet he wasn't invested in her current life. Yes, he wanted her to go to a good school but only because that impacted her future. He didn't spend any time with her. That made me sad for him and her.
I liked how the book ended actually. You didn't know what would come of the comet or astroid (or whatever it was), and he was content sitting on the beach.
Overall, it was a sad book with believable responses to situations. I just wish Keith could have realized earlier what is important in life. It makes me wonder what he lives for from here on out. He is literally left with nothing. I am a Christian, so for me, there is something greater to live for. I am sad for people who don't believe that there is something bigger than all of us to live for.
July 23, 2012
Keith Corcoran is an astronaut whose daughter died and wife left him while he was at the space station a few hundred miles above earth. This is an interesting, cringe-inducing setup. The character is in the atmosphere (no gravity, get it?) when he receives the most devastating news a parent can hear and there is no possible way to get home quickly. He has to watch a video of his daughter’s funeral several months after the fact.
We meet Keith when all of this has already happened. He’s back on earth, wandering around. The atmosphere/effect is quite detached. At first it’s almost as though he’s not that upset about the daughter or the wife for that matter. As a reader it’s a bit off-putting but it does work on some level because I’d imagine a person could get to some sort of numb and detached state after going through what he did. Not a lot happens in this book. Hardly anything at all. And if you’re looking for insight into the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter you won’t get it here. For her big role Quinn is very small.
The whole suburbia/space juxtaposition is brilliantly rendered and how could you not like the relationship between Keith and his neighbor Peter? The author could’ve made Barb (ex-wife) seem likeable on some level. She’s not portrayed with a single ounce of humanity or complexity, just shrill and evil.
I’m not surprised the critics are crazy over this book. There is a sort of beautiful and heartbreaking simplicity to it. That said, I don’t think it would have mass appeal. I tend to like “quieter” books and it was excruciatingly slow at times, even for me. I liked it but would only recommend it to a few.
We meet Keith when all of this has already happened. He’s back on earth, wandering around. The atmosphere/effect is quite detached. At first it’s almost as though he’s not that upset about the daughter or the wife for that matter. As a reader it’s a bit off-putting but it does work on some level because I’d imagine a person could get to some sort of numb and detached state after going through what he did. Not a lot happens in this book. Hardly anything at all. And if you’re looking for insight into the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter you won’t get it here. For her big role Quinn is very small.
The whole suburbia/space juxtaposition is brilliantly rendered and how could you not like the relationship between Keith and his neighbor Peter? The author could’ve made Barb (ex-wife) seem likeable on some level. She’s not portrayed with a single ounce of humanity or complexity, just shrill and evil.
I’m not surprised the critics are crazy over this book. There is a sort of beautiful and heartbreaking simplicity to it. That said, I don’t think it would have mass appeal. I tend to like “quieter” books and it was excruciatingly slow at times, even for me. I liked it but would only recommend it to a few.
April 11, 2013
It's interesting how the summary on the jacket about an astronaut surviving in an alien world could be so completely misleading and yet true at the same time. The Infinite Tides is in no way science fiction or a post apocalyptic "survival book"; not in the way you'd imagine. It's about a man's world being turned upside down while he's in an incredibly vulnerable situation. And it's probably one of the best pieces of fiction I've read.
The writer's ability to put into words some aspects of our thoughts and emotions that are normally so hard to explain and articulate is really special, and he does this all in a clear and simple way. I mean, it can't be very easy to make a mathematical genius / astronaut so human and relatable, but he does it. My only regret is reading through it so quickly...
The writer's ability to put into words some aspects of our thoughts and emotions that are normally so hard to explain and articulate is really special, and he does this all in a clear and simple way. I mean, it can't be very easy to make a mathematical genius / astronaut so human and relatable, but he does it. My only regret is reading through it so quickly...
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