Great translation, very well written and readable prose.
But.
I read to be informed and/or entertained and this story does neither for me. ( )

Felt staged (coincidence she’s a dramatist?) Felt purient. Like a Law and Order SVU episode. Read lightly. Kinda couldn’t bear it, but the end gained traction. And the last page was a stunner:

“I had two dead children. And them? What did they have? I stood up to look at them both, now they were the same. I looked at their bodies hidden by those old sheets and thin blankets, Kevin’s curled up in a ball and Stan’s stretched out. I looked at them and I saw. I saw something I’d never thought of, something I’d never imagined ever: Kevin’s face was turned toward the wall, and Stan’s toward the window. They had their backs to each other. They weren’t together, no, each had gone his separate way. They weren’t joined together in death, they’d lost each other there.

And I screamed.” ( )

This dark short novella translated from French by Pereine Press centres around a mother taking a trip with her two small boys to stay in a wet and dreary sea side town. It's a profoundly sad tale of a woman who is struggling with mental illness, motherhood and social poverty.

The holiday has been planned in the wrong season with expectations of enjoyment for the children that will never be realised. We experience through her first person narrative the never-ending rain, their financial hardship and the mother's severely distorted thought process of what other people think of her.

It's a superbly written but deeply sad account of serious mental illness and tragedy.

4 stars for the fantastic writing, but the terribly sad tale makes for an appreciative read rather than necessarily an enjoyable one. ( )

"When it came to an end that was where we belonged. We knew that"
By sally tarbox on 8 March 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
Read in one sitting: a woman takes her two sons - nine and five - on a trip to see the sea. But this is no jolly holiday memoir: the mother (narrator) is very obviously massively mentally ill. Her eldest son is very aware:
"Stan kept giving me suspicious looks like when I just sit in the kitchen and he watches me, thinking I don't know he's there, barefoot in his pyjamas, I don't even have the strength to say Don't stay there with nothing on your feet, Stan. Yep, sometimes I sit in the kitchen for hours and I couldn't give a stuff about anything."

She's planned this treat, saved up bags of change. But the whole thing is ill-thought ot, it's cold, wet,they can't afford to feed themselves, the hotel's awful. As the pressures build up, she resorts to sleep... But we have hints throughout that bode ill. Builds to a horrifying climax.
Amazing writing - one you'll never forget. ( )

this is why i'll never have kids ( )