Book review:Tide-table of Liam Fox

Abstract

A book normally reflects the world of thoughts of its author. Drop by drop, the author’s life—joy and sadness, anger and love, concerns and wishes—soak into the book. In fiction, the identity of the author is in invisible form, not systemic, or clearly visible in one image; instead it may be distributed among several characters. Even though the author’s identity is allocated a small space in literature, it plays the role of salt to a meal: just a small amount of it melts into the food, but without it, the food is flavorless. In non-fiction, such as history or philosophy, the author analyzes facts and openly states his/her attitude towards them. These types of works, in contrast to literature, reveal the identity of the author throughout the book. If a work is based on serious research, the author tries to downplay his/her identity, to write with objectivity and maintain the principle of seeing everyone through the lens of equality. He/she avoids polarized views of “them” and “us,” as well as sympathy and antipathy; he/she writes with empathy (or rather, tries to do so; after all, authors are also human). However, there is one more type of work or possible author approach. In this case, the author writes to “our own” and tries to explain certain points to them, help them understand what awaits “us” in the future, and to draw lessons and conclusions from historical and current events. Rising Tides by Liam Fox can be placed in this last category. The author uses the word “us” in its narrow sense to mean Great Britain and in its broad sense to include Western democracy.