Beside the Sea [Paperback]

 

 

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This skilfully written novel, Beside the Sea, tells the story of a troubled single mother, who takes her two young sons for a visit to the seaside. She describes the long bus journey through the rain to the unnamed coastal town, arriving at night, to book into a dismal hotel where she is assigned tiny room on the sixth floor. This is going to be no holiday, for despite the woman's desire to give her boys a treat, shortage of money and a mother's trouble mind dog their days, plus of course the unremitting rain.

I was quickly drawn in to this tragic tale, and finishing the book this morning, i found myself full of pity for this little family. If only someone had noticed. If only those men in the café had been more helpful. If only the hotel owner had called social services. But then no doubt they would have met with an uncomprehending response - they aren't my patch, they're just visiting, they'll be all right. Alas, they aren't all right, and we privileged readers see all the clues, the references to social workers, the neglect of essentials . . .

. . .I hadn't taken my medicine, but no one sat on me that night. I was like everyone else that night . . . I slept like I do during the day.

It takes money to organise a holiday, not a pitiful tea-tin containing loose change "scrimped from the change at the baker, and sometimes the supermarket". Véronique Olmi describes every detail of this couple of days with painful precision. The mother is trying so hard to make things work, but just doesn't have the ability. They trudge through the rain to see the sea, but they find, "great waves stretching furiously . . . gathering high to reach us then falling back down".

They find a café and meet hostility from the owner and his other customers who mutter about the children not being in school today. What can a young mother do other than go back to the hotel and pull the sheets over her head? Her boys play listlessly with coins and watch the raindrops falling down the window-pane, apparently accustomed to their mother's withdrawals from the world. The story soon reaches its inevitable conclusion and left this reader at least thinking of all the families who struggle so hard against impossible odds and find only despair at the end of their journey.

In Beside the Sea, Véronique Olbi has perfectly captured the harshness of life where loneliness and poverty represent insuperable barriers to contentment. The voice which narrates the tale is perfect. We are not told the woman's history, but its all there in her speech, the familiarity with bargain-basement life, the little flashes of humour emerging from a tormented subconscious, the maternal love for her boys, marred by too much struggle keep her head above water. The first person narration works perfectly and I was reminded of other author equally adept at depicting the outworking of a damaged psyche such as M J Hyland This is How or Neil Cross Always the Sun.

From time to time we see glimpses of a more equable personalty which show what might have been if life hadn't dealt this young mother such a difficult hand, and it is impossible to feel judgemental about her - would we fare any better under such circumstances? And it Véronique Olmi's ability to seek out a sympathetic response in her readers which makes this book work - her readers are not just causal observers of this seaside holiday but find themselves longing for this intractable set of problems to be solved.

Beside the Sea is a very worthwhile read and a book to be recommended to anyone who likes fictional realism in large doses.

I cant start my bookish thoughts on `Beside the Sea' without stating that it is one of the most intense reads that I have had the fortune (though maybe that's not quite the right word) of reading recently. It starts as the simple tale of a single mother taking her children on a holiday to see the sea for the first time only as the book develops much darker undertones start to slowly seep out of the narrative and you realise this isn't going to be quite the picturesque read that you thought it might be.

To give away very much about this books storyline would be to spoil this book for the reader. I will try not to let the cat out of the bag when I describe what an amazing tension Olmi creates in this novel through the narration. The nameless young mother describes to the reader her trip away and as the tale goes on from the coach ride to hotel arrival, café treats to first sightings of the sea you are given small glimpses that something isn't quite right. Health centres, social workers, Sundays in bed all day and medication start to be mentioned and the further you read on the more you get that gut feeling all is not well and something darker is coming.

One of the quotes from the book mentions that though not a thriller this book does read as one and that's a very true statement. I can't think of many books where the atmosphere and intensity of the novel come off the page so instantly and leave you to read on even if you aren't sure you want to.

I know there are some people out there who think that if you don't have children then you can't relate to tales about mother's (or father's) feelings for their child or children. I think that's a load of rubbish, I believe that a wonderful author can take you absolutely anywhere, into any mind or situation, that's the wonder of books. Olmi is just such a writer who put me into the mind of a mother thinking of her and her children's lives and left me rather an emotional wreck and not any books can leave me almost feeling physically winded.

This is a literally stunning narrative. It rings so true and is so close to the bone of life's terrors that one reads on with a sense of dread. The unnamed narrator, the mother, is taking her two boys, Stan and Kevin, to the seaside for a holiday, she's packed their sports-bags, though she can't carry anything because of a recent dislocation of her shoulder. The reader is forced to piece together the background to this story from such clues. Is she fleeing some kind of attack? No father is mentioned, the children never mention one but the mother seems to have a history of medication, all of which she has left behind for this trip to the sea. Quite early, I would say from the initial bus journey and arrival at the seaside, in this very short (111pp) novella, that one senses a growing darkness around the future for these vulnerable children and their increasingly vulnerable mother.

The writing is superbly natural throughout, with the two boys given distinct personalities. Stan, the elder boy is around nine - he is watchful, careful with his mother, but there is a moment on the beach where, looking back, one senses his estrangement, when something of his mother's desperation is given expression by this child. Kevin is the needy one, the baby, five or six years-old, forced, perhaps to behave badly, or younger than he is, in order to gain attention.

The mother has very little money with her, and that in small denominations, which causes her problems with a café proprietor. The mood of the novel is set by the constant rain, the muddy beach, the hot greasy chips, which are all she can afford for the children to eat. She never eats herself, however, spending everything on the boys, the last of their meagre collection of coins on rides at the funfair, and then they walk back to their hotel. There is a final scene. This is one of the darkest and most devastating books I have ever read.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking
I read this book in one sitting, not because I was especially engrossed in it, but because I wanted to find out what prompted a mother to take her boys to the seaside in the... Read more

Published 2 months ago by liveenl

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that challenges, and rewards, and challenges again
I love this book so much I wrote a long piece about it for Pank Magazine [...] where I compared it with (the much lesser) We need To Talk About Kevin. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Dan Holloway

5.0 out of 5 stars Beside the Sea
In the hurry to become independent adults, children often forget that while their actions are, for them, additive, they often strike their parents as a loss. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Damian Kelleher

5.0 out of 5 stars 'on the edge of a precipice'
There are people out there who want to shout from the rooftops about literature in translation and a few weeks ago I recommended this novella from new publishing outfit Peirene... Read more

Published 18 months ago by William Rycroft

5.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, compelling, impressive
I read this novel in an intense burst where all I could do was keep turning the pages. It is not an easy read by any means but there is something incredibly gripping about it - it... Read more

Published 18 months ago by Clare

5.0 out of 5 stars Saddest journey to the sea ever.
This is a difficult one. While I want to give this short novel five stars for the quality of its writing and for the sheer gripping power of its narrative, it is also a book I... Read more

Published 18 months ago by Josephine Huys

1.0 out of 5 stars Hated it
The story is a narrative told by a mother who takes her two children to the seaside for a holiday. It quickly becomes apparent that she is not the best mother in the world; she... Read more

Published 19 months ago by Illustrated Man

4.0 out of 5 stars A sad but completely compelling read
A single mother takes her two young children to the seaside for the first time. Sounds nice doesn't it, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Read more

Published 20 months ago by Annabel Gaskell

5.0 out of 5 stars Just couldn't put it down!
I started reading this book on my journey home from work one evening, never has a train ride gone so fast. Read more

Published 22 months ago by Ms. N. Sutton

5.0 out of 5 stars Bleakly beautiful story of a mother's dangerous love for her children
A mother takes her two young sons on a trip to the seaside. Sounds nice, doesn't it? But this is not a nice little feel-good story about a trip to the sea. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Andrew Blackman

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