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Laura Spence-Ash’s debut novel, Beyond That, the Sea, spans thirty years, two continents, and eight points of view, but it never loses focus, momentum, or its loving attention to detail. As German bombs fall over London in 1940, Millie and Reginald Thompson make the difficult choice to send their eleven-year-old daughter, Bea, to America to live with Nancy and Ethan Gregory, who will keep her safe for the duration of the war. During her five years in Boston, Bea develops an unbreakable bond with Nancy and Ethan, as well as with their sons, William and Gerald. Bea returns to England after the war, but in the thirty years that follow, part of her heart remains in America as she navigates the challenges of adulthood, grief, and cross-Atlantic love.
I sat down with Laura over Zoom to discuss how to tell a technically and emotionally complex story that unravels over many decades and generations. We also discussed postal chess and the elusive subject of time.
Maria Kuznetsova
Where did the idea for the novel come from?
Laura Spence-Ash
In 1998 (25 years ago!), I read an article in the New York Times about a group of older British adults who returned to the States to see where they had lived during the war. While I had known that children were sent to the country, I had no idea that children were sent so far away and often alone. I couldn’t stop thinking about this—my children were young then, and I couldn’t imagine making the choice to send them away. I read everything I could find, including accounts written by evacuees. When I read a memoir by a man who had been sent to live in the same town where I went to high school, a story began to form in my mind.
Maria Kuznetsova
How did you make them feel like they belonged to the World War II era and the 30 years that followed, while also making them feel so relatable to modern readers?
Laura Spence-Ash
One of the reasons I love writing about the past is the connection to the present. I never thought I was writing historical fiction; I was writing about characters who lived in a different time. I often write about the past in present tense—I like the friction that develops there, and the way that the present tense makes the past come alive.
In terms of weaving in history, I did a fair bit of research early on about the Blitz, but I began to wonder if I would ever actually write the book if I kept doing research. So I focused on writing, instead, doing deep dives into a given time period when I got there. I love putting in small details that firmly place the reader in the time, but don’t overwhelm the characters’ stories.
Maria Kuznetsova
The novel spans over 30 years and has eight narrators. With so much going on, how did you know what to dramatize or what to summarize? This is a challenge with any novel, but I wonder if it was particularly hard in a book with so much scope. I would be tempted to leave every little thing in.
Laura Spence-Ash
When I decided to write the book with multiple POVs and over a long period of time, I knew that each moment would need to be quite brief. I had written “Desire Lines,” a short story about two characters over thirty years, and the POV pings back and forth between them, moving forward in time. I really enjoyed writing that story and thinking about a moment that might help clarify who they were at that time and their relationship to each other. That was my model when I started working on the novel in this format—to think about moments, rather than scenes, and to not always focus on the big moments, but to consider the before and the after. I thought of these moments as memories in the making. It seems to me that we don’t always remember the big moments; we often remember something quite small that resonates, for whatever reason. I’m always interested in the passage of time and in incremental change over time. How I wish I could write a book that takes place over a weekend, but I don’t think I can!
Maria Kuznetsova
I can’t imagine writing a book that takes place over a weekend, because I would feel so much pressure to make every little moment feel significant, instead of letting the years and characters breathe until big moments emerge. What do you think it is that makes you so interested in time?
Laura Spence-Ash
Oh, that’s a good question! I think, in part, it’s an avoidance of plot! I’m far more interested in characters than in plot. I want to know what happens to characters over time, how they change and develop, how their past weighs on their present. Any time I try to write something that’s more plot-driven, the plot points always feel disingenuous, as though they come from some other place. I like everything to feel organic, that things happen because of the characters and the time in which they live. I like what you said about letting the characters breathe—I think that’s just it. I’m interested in the quotidian moments, not the big bangs.
Maria Kuznetsova
Related to handling time: how did you navigate so many points of view? Did it start that way, or did it start with Bea and then balloon out? What do you think you were able to do with the multiple points of view that you couldn’t do with just Bea? Who was the most fun to write?
Laura Spence-Ash
Yes, originally I thought that Bea would be the narrator. Then there was a period of time when I thought Bea and the two American boys, William and Gerald, would narrate the book, with each one taking the microphone for a decade. But, ultimately, I discovered I was interested in everyone in both families, so it seemed right that they all should have a chance to tell their story. At its heart, I think this is a novel about family, and so it makes sense, I think, to have all the points of view. If I had written just from Bea’s perspective, I don’t think it would have felt fully developed.
I enjoyed writing all the characters. One of the joys in writing such short chapters is that you’re constantly being challenged to inhabit another perspective. There was always someone new to think about. Rose is a character who doesn’t enter the book until the final third, and I really enjoyed getting to know her. She brought a new energy to the book, I think, and it was very fun to spend time with her.
Maria Kuznetsova
I loved Millie and Nancy as these two different matriarchs, taking different approaches to love and life. Nancy lived a more solitary life in America, while Millie had a series of romances gone wrong. I loved the bit when Millie told Bea that you love people differently at different times. Did you see Millie and Nancy as foils, and did you consider the theme of different types of love over time, or did it just naturally emerge as you wrote?
Laura Spence-Ash
I certainly didn’t set out to write a book about love, but I do think that’s where it ended up. It’s hard to spend time with these two families and not end up falling in love with them. They are certainly not perfect, but they are trying to be the best versions of themselves, I think. And as for Millie and Nancy: I certainly knew at the start how different they were, and I enjoyed juxtaposing those differences. What I didn’t know was how much they shared and how time shaped both who they became and their relationship to one another.
Maria Kuznetsova
Most of the dialogue in your novel is in italics and comes in the middle of paragraphs, instead of being offset by quotes. This unconventional style felt right for your book, maybe because of the scope and long time frame. Why did you make this decision, and how did it seem to fit into the overall themes in your book?
Laura Spence-Ash
When I began writing in shorter chapters in present tense, it made sense to me that the dialogue would simply be part of whatever moment I was writing about. No more and no less important than a thought or an action or a description. Oftentimes, because of the brevity of the moment, we don’t see complete conversations, we just hear snippets. And that’s what I wanted to capture. It’s fascinating, actually, how the way we typically present dialogue on the page—with quotation marks and separate lines per speaker—foregrounds dialogue in a really prominent way. I wanted to move away from that for most of the book. I think that’s connected to the idea of moments versus scenes.
But in the second part of the book, there are only two characters who are together for a brief period of time. Here, I wrote in the past tense, because I wanted to be able to use the retrospective voice, and I wanted the emphasis to be on the past. With the dialogue, I wanted it to be represented more traditionally, because I saw this section as stories that each character was telling themselves for years to come, and that they would remember each line of dialogue as it was spoken.
Maria Kuznetsova
Let’s end by talking about postal chess! Over the course of the novel, several British and American members of each family play postal chess with one another, making one move at a time as their letters sail across the sea. I see it as a metaphor for how people from two different families connect over the ocean. I also love the contrast with texting and Twitter, how people waited weeks to get the next move and how this was deeply satisfying. Is this saying something about modern communication or am I reading into it too much?
Laura Spence-Ash
I knew a little something about chess. My son played in tournaments when he was young, and my husband’s uncle played postal chess with him, as well. My husband’s uncle still plays postal chess with a number of people, and he is almost 90! I like what you said about the contrast with today’s world. I was definitely thinking about that as I wrote the book, not only with the chess but also with the letter writing and the very infrequent phone calls. We communicate so differently now. Is that a good thing?
And another thing about the chess game—when I was researching postal chess, I learned that the postal cards were either destroyed or redacted during the war because there was a fear that the chess notation was some sort of code. I loved that detail and so of course it made its way into the book.
Maria Kuznetsova
I loved it, too! It seemed to both emphasize the theme of relationships taking a long time to develop and, also, how the way we talk to one another can be deeply affected by historical context. I wish more people took the time to play postal chess today!
FICTION
Beyond That, the Sea
Laura Spence-Ash
Celadon Books
Published March 21, 2023
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