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Beside The Sea by Veronique Olmi
Now a major play at the South Bank Centre – 7th & 8th March 2012
Can a mother’s love for her children be more dangerous than the dark world she wants to keep at bay?
A single mother takes her two young sons (five and nine years old) on a trip to the seaside. They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate and go to the funfair. She wants to protect them from a cold and uncomprehending world. Despite a very sad end – she suffocates the children while they sleep – the book stands as a tour de force that reveals the thin line between love and violence. It is also a haunting and psychologically accurate depiction of a mother’s irrational fear of not being perfect, of not being able to release her children into the wide world. The simple first person narrative has a bald, unsophisticated quality that achieves a momentum and elegance all its own. It is bleak, yet full of unexpected beauty and tenderness.
Why is this newsworthy?
An extra-ordinary story that makes a shocking series of events totally believable. Véronique Olmi’s Beside the Sea tells the story of a mother who kills her two children. First published in France in 2001, the book became a bestseller on the continent.
A well-known French translator, Adriana Hunter, discovered the text in 2006. She translated the book in her own time. But no UK publisher was prepared to accept the book given the disturbing subject matter. However, in 2009 Adriana met a new publisher: Peirene Press. Meike Ziervogel set up Peirene Press in 2008. When she read Beside the Sea she immediately recognized the importance of the work. The story depicts the destructive side of maternal love – a subject matter society all too often denies.
Regardless of the financial risk, Meike published Beside the Sea as Peirene’s launch title in 2010. For the book launch she asked the actress Lisa Dwan to read an extract. Lisa Dwan performed Beckett’s Not I to huge critical acclaim at the South Bank Centre in 2009. When she read Beside the Sea, Lisa committed her own money to acquire the adaptation and performance rights. She persuaded the South Bank Centre to let her
perform the work as a one-woman play.
Beside the Sea is a UK success story of triumph against the odds due to the determination of three women: translator Adriana Hunter, publisher Meike Ziervogel, actress Lisa Dwan. As a result of their efforts the work was:
Reprinted after only three months.
Long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010.
£8.99 pb
