Beyond That, The Sea | Laura Spence-Ash

What is historical fiction? I read about this book in a round-up story in the NY Times Book Review, categorized as Historical Fiction. Is it simply a story that took place in the past, or does it need to center around actual historical events as a key element of the story? In an interview, the author of this lovely debut novel doesn't see this novel as historical fiction, and I agree with that. To go down this rabbit hole a bit further, I looked up what it takes to have a book considered to be literary rather than popular fiction. Generally speaking, plot-driven stories are more likely to be popular fiction, while novels center around character and style. That works for me as a model--how about you?

So here's what it's about: a young (11 year old) girl is sent from London by her parents to America from her home in WWII (I believe it's 1940) to live with a New England family. The relocation of children out of London is the historical hook that would lead some to see this as historical fiction,

The story takes places from 1940 to 1977 and features 8 points of view. They're all in first person. The format is one of my favorites--short chapters from the cast of characters. The chapters are 2-6-ish pages long. The writing is spare, simple and evocative of New England, and specifically Maine which is a central location for the story. The themes of the story are displacement, love, separation, loss and what it means to be a family.

You might pick up here that I really liked the story. I agree with some of the reviewers who thought that one particular relationship was a bit thin (you'll know it when you read it). But while it comes to an (expected) happy ending, I really appreciated Spence-Ash's emotional but not overblown writing style and the gentle suspense that builds from the cadence of the chapters. Spence-Ash also used a different format for quotations in the story that contributes to that cadence and sense of emotion. All dialogue is in italics and it's not separated by the typical convention of quotation marks and paragraph breaks. Sometimes you can imagine that some of it maybe isn't even dialogue, or at least oral dialogue, but rather thoughts shared between people. I thought this was original and highly effective in supporting the story. This is Spence-Ash's first novel and I hope there are more to come.