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A review by bashbashbashbash
Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi
4.0
The European obsession with the Unnatural Mother has a lengthy history, from the oral folktale to the contemporary tabloid. Olmi's sharp novella is narrated by a woman whose financial and psychological deterioration lead her to the conclusion that she must murder both her beloved young sons.
This is a triumph of voice: we are immediately swept up and washed out to the muddy, bleak seaside along with this woman and her two boys. The narrator is in a constant state of oscillation: in the past, in the present; sometimes speaking only for herself, sometimes presenting herself and the boys as a complete unit; now loving her sons, now bewildered at their needs, their yearning, their anger. We are dragged through a featureless brown hotel, to the iron sea and around a shrieking, miserable funfair, until the final, irrevocable scene, when the murders are done.
Olmi plays a great narrative trick, because not only does the reader begin to understand the narrator's interior but also, through her, we begin to comprehend her sons, Kevin (5) and Stan (9). Though the narrator often projects her own mental state onto them, it's easy to see the effects of their mother's instability upon them. Stan withdraws into himself, and behaves perfectly in public in order to compensate for his mother's erratic actions and his own ill-fitted clothes, while Kevin yearns and yearns for affection, for his needs to once and for all be met. The narrator sees the signs of these things, but often she misinterprets, or else does not take them on board at all, but rather discards the signs of her sons' distress.
The translation is exceptional and effective, capturing the narrator's breathless colloquial voice perfectly. Yep, this is a good translation full of British colloquialisms. You will forget it was written first in French.
This is a triumph of voice: we are immediately swept up and washed out to the muddy, bleak seaside along with this woman and her two boys. The narrator is in a constant state of oscillation: in the past, in the present; sometimes speaking only for herself, sometimes presenting herself and the boys as a complete unit; now loving her sons, now bewildered at their needs, their yearning, their anger. We are dragged through a featureless brown hotel, to the iron sea and around a shrieking, miserable funfair, until the final, irrevocable scene, when the murders are done.
Olmi plays a great narrative trick, because not only does the reader begin to understand the narrator's interior but also, through her, we begin to comprehend her sons, Kevin (5) and Stan (9). Though the narrator often projects her own mental state onto them, it's easy to see the effects of their mother's instability upon them. Stan withdraws into himself, and behaves perfectly in public in order to compensate for his mother's erratic actions and his own ill-fitted clothes, while Kevin yearns and yearns for affection, for his needs to once and for all be met. The narrator sees the signs of these things, but often she misinterprets, or else does not take them on board at all, but rather discards the signs of her sons' distress.
The translation is exceptional and effective, capturing the narrator's breathless colloquial voice perfectly. Yep, this is a good translation full of British colloquialisms. You will forget it was written first in French.