This hit me harder, emotionally, than I was expecting.
At eleven years old, the main character, Beatrix, is sent by her parents from London to New England to escape the German air raids. There she lives with the Gregory family until the end of the war, finding a place in their family that comes to feel more natural than the distant relationship she maintains through letters with her parents in England. Inevitably, as the war comes to an end she must leave her new family behind and return to the life she was cast from, finding both her former home and herself changed. As she grows older, she must learn what to let go and what to hold close from her time in America and in England.
At its heart, Beyond That, the Sea is the story of a woman caught between two separated lives, where living in one means losing pieces of the other, often irreparably. It's heart-wrenching in its portrayal of nostalgia, grief, and a sense of displacement. The story is heavily focused on the relationships between characters with the POV split between Beatrix and all the members of both her families giving insight into all of their complexities. The characters all read as real, at their most sympathetic and their most frustrating.
At eleven years old, the main character, Beatrix, is sent by her parents from London to New England to escape the German air raids. There she lives with the Gregory family until the end of the war, finding a place in their family that comes to feel more natural than the distant relationship she maintains through letters with her parents in England. Inevitably, as the war comes to an end she must leave her new family behind and return to the life she was cast from, finding both her former home and herself changed. As she grows older, she must learn what to let go and what to hold close from her time in America and in England.
At its heart, Beyond That, the Sea is the story of a woman caught between two separated lives, where living in one means losing pieces of the other, often irreparably. It's heart-wrenching in its portrayal of nostalgia, grief, and a sense of displacement. The story is heavily focused on the relationships between characters with the POV split between Beatrix and all the members of both her families giving insight into all of their complexities. The characters all read as real, at their most sympathetic and their most frustrating.