Véronique Olmi - 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. A baby soon becomes a toddler, and then a child, and then a teenager, and then an adult, and then they experience the cycle for themselves. But a parent doesn't stop being a parent, and each phase, as it slips away, is forever lost and always remembered. Véronique Olmi's Beside the Sea is a novel of motherhood, though not as it is described in the ordinary sense. Olmi takes, as her subject, the possessive and suffocating aspects of a mother's love, and examines the consequence of the terrifying logic that can afflict a sickened mind.

The narrator of Beside the Sea is a deeply introverted, deeply depressed woman who works hard for very little money, and cares for her two children, nine-year-old Stan and five-year-old Kevin, by herself. Her life is a constant battle of worry and effort, one she can't cope with, and one we suspect she hasn't been able to handle for quite some time. The narrator thinks,

I don't sleep well at night. It's the worrying. I couldn't tell you what about. It's like something's been lowered onto me...

She takes her two sons to the sea. It's the middle of the week, which means they are missing school. This worries Stan who, at nine, has become one of those unfortunate young children who care more for their sick parent than their parent cares for them. He has assumed many of the duties normally performed by a parent, and the narrator recognises this, and pities her son, but she can't muster up the energy to do anything about it.

Wait till tomorrow when he sees the sea! I thought. I couldn't see how that – the sea – could disappoint us, it's the same everywhere for everyone and I was perfectly capable of taking my kids to see it, thank you very much, I could travel at night, it's not true that I'm paralyzed by my anxieties, like they say at the health centre.

The 'health centre' is mentioned often, and so too is the fact that the mother is missing teeth, and sleeps too much, and is generally unhealthy. We suspect that life has knocked her about rather too much, but she confesses at one stage that she has no memories, nothing – just a few, here and there, of her children. But nothing of her own childhood, and little of her immediate past. Something dark has happened – probably – but what we, and the narrator, don't know.

Beside the Sea is written in simple language and is almost confessional in its outpouring. The narrator is the 'I' to some 'you', though we don't know to whom. The boys' father? But we learn that Kevin's father is a random plumber of no meaning to the narrator, and we know nothing of Stan's (though it is implied they have different fathers). A health worker? She has nothing but complaints about them, for daring to consider she has problems. Who, then? We don't know – but perhaps herself, an extended justification for her life and behaviour.

The talking started all on its own in my head, I hate that, thinking is a nasty piece of work. Sometimes I'd rather be a dog, you can be dogs never wonder what their place in life is or who they should follow, they just sniff the air and it's all recorded, in there for ever. And they stick to it. Humans don't have a sense of smell, that's what's dangerous. I'd like to be able to sniff around me and for everything to be clear, with just one meaning and no messing around.

She is clearly uncomfortable with being alive and the responsibilities this requires. She loves her children, but she's utterly dependent upon them. Stan provides material support by cleaning and caring, while Kevin gives emotional support through unconditional love. But she notices that Kevin is growing older and separating from his mother, becoming more of an individual. And Stan, well – at nine, his eventual abandonment of the family home doesn't seem all that far away. They depend on her because she's their mother, but she depends on them for everything, because they provide purpose in her life. But this obligation has festered into resentment and exhaustion, and the cracks in the narrator's mind threaten to becoming chasms into which anything can fall, and from which anything can happen. But oh, she does love these boys:

Mum! Kevin cried when he saw I was awake, and that's a wonderful thing! The way a littl'un says hello to you in the morning, as if you were the surprise of the day, the piece of good news he'd given up on.

Near the end of the novel, after the visit to the sea, which ends poorly, and after a visit to a cafe, which is even worse; after they go to the fair, a dazzling display of colour and sound that overwhelm the boys and almost paralyzes the mother, after all of that, our narrator is close to breaking. And she knows it.

I ran to the bathroom and I stuck my head under the cold tap, to save myself. It was freezing. It hurt. It got inside my skull, I was being pulled by my hair, pulled towards the ceiling, my whole back was trapped in the ice, I was in pain, real pain, the explainable, logical sort, I was in brilliant white light, I was nowhere, in fact. I'd stopped falling. I got up. I woke up. I was breathing heavily from fighting the cold water, I'd made up my mind to win, to suffer for as long as possible, it felt terrible and wonderful at the same time, looking the enemy in the face at last, knowing exactly what's hurting, and emerging dazed, breathless, worn out. I was whimpering, the struggle was almost over, I was a solid mass of pain, it was coming to an end.

She can't handle any more the life she has been inflicted with, and something must come to a head. We all know what it is – Olmi has scattered hints and more than hints throughout the novel – but nonetheless the final twenty pages are a tour de force of narrative intensity and emotional complexity. The narrator remembers her children as they were when they were younger, and even more dependent on her than they are now – and regrets that they are no longer like that. She thinks that the best time they ever had together was when they were together, that is, when each child was tucked safely away in her womb. Everything after that was a disappointment, because they inexorably and too rapidly slipped away from her, and became their own people. She reasons that this must not be allowed to occur, and then her actions become very frightening indeed.

Beside the Sea is a spectacular book, one that succeeds astonishingly well in the task Olmi has set herself. It is emphatically a novel about motherhood and the difficulties associated with the mother-child bond, one that chooses to explore the darker, less popularly conceived notions of child raising. The final pages, for all that they were foreshadowed throughout the entire book, caused a quickening of my heart in a manner which I have only experienced during my own, personal, emotional situations, which is to say it touched me to the quick in a way I did not expect and for which I am profoundly grateful. A success on every level, and a magnificent novel for Peirene Press to select as their first published work.

Author	Véronique Olmi
Title	Beside the Sea (Original Title: Bord de Mer)
Translator	Adriana Hunter
Nationality	French
Publisher	Peirene Press
Published	2010 (English) 2001 (French)
Pages	111
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (FR) ---

Links

Links kindly provided by The Dalkey Archive Press' anthology, Best European Fiction 2010

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