Beyond That, the Sea (2023) by Laura Spence-Ash

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Beyond That, the Sea (2023)

by Laura Spence-Ash

Chelsea, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 9/30

  I listened to this entire Audiobook- 12-13 hours worth, without guessing that this was a recent release.  It's obviously a recent work of historical fiction but it could have been published anytime in the past fifty years and I wouldn't have questioned it.  But, as it turns out it came out this summer and got a capsule review back in May of this year.  The Times called it, "a timeless exploration of what it means to be a family," but I mostly found the Audiobook bearable because of the accents from upper-crust Boston and working class London in the 1940's to 1960's as articulated by the book readers.   Beyond That, the Sea is a good example of a book I might have been able to complete in hardback, but give me an Audiobook with a female narrator in 1950's London and I am all ears for 10 to 15 hours of drive time.

   The story is about a girl- Beatrix call her "Bea" who is shipped across the ocean during the London Blitz to live with a genteel family in Boston.  For the purposes of the 1001 Novels project, Beyond That, the Sea is assigned to Chelsea, which is a still-grubby western suburb of the center city.  I've never been there beyond stopping to buy a doughnut and coffee off the freeway on the way north, but I gather from the description of the family home of the American host family, it used to have some nice parts. 

   Her host family is part of the genteel protestant world of old Boston- Dad is a three generation legacy at Harvard, Mom comes from a family that is perhaps less cultured but wealthier than that of the Dad.  They live in a house provided by the school where Dad is the headmaster.  They have two sons.   Most of the book is about the relationship with Bea and those two boys (then men) but both sets of parents have their own distinct voices, with both Mothers taking up almost as much space as the central relationship between Beatrix and the two sons of the family.

  Here, for the first time, nine books in, we get some good Boston content- Beatrix loves Fenway park and a couple important scenes take place there.  There  are also decent descriptions of Maine- where the family owns a small island with a house.  There is some tediousness in the fact that most of the book takes place with the three main characters on separate continents for decades- it's just not conducive to compelling fiction- but it's a pleasant enough book.  It is fiction- not literature, with a happy ending fit for a Hallmark movie.