When I first read Beside the Sea I was bowled over. I did not go through calculations in my head. I did not ask the questions every reasonable 
publisher would do and perhaps ought to ask: is the subject something that most people would love to read about? Is there a target audience for the book? Who would it be? How can it be marketed? I didn’t. Because I knew whatever the odds, I wanted to publish this book. Why?
When I had my first child nearly 15 years ago, it took me three years to come to terms with being a mother. I spent a lot of the time feeling caged, trying to escape. It was only when I understood that motherhood is not a single state but an ongoing journey, that I was able to become the mother I wanted to be.
Motherhood, even nowadays, is a taboo subject, hidden behind a veil of sweet baby talk. We don’t acknowledge the extremely complicated emotions involved. We don’t admit that maternal love contains dark as well as light.
Beside the Sea tells the story of a mother who suffocates her two young children without ever having harmed them before. It provides a heart breaking insight into a mind of a woman who loved her children in a way that doesn’t match society’s view of blissful motherly love. Only the reader realizes the artificiality of the standards against which she is judged – and judges herself.
On Thursday reality seemed to have caught up with fiction. I saw the sad headline of a women who had walked into a police station the previous day claiming that she had killed – indeed suffocated – her two young children. Newspapers were quick to announce that her mental health was being checked, that her marriage has been extremely problematic. These facts calm us, but do they explain? And, more importantly, will they help to prevent events like these from happening again?
Like any good literary piece of work, Beside the Sea does not provide answers but it challenges us to rethink our perceptions in an area that is fundamental to our existence: the mother-child relationship. A must read, as far as I am concerned. And that’s why I published it.
Tags: Beside the Sea, Fiona Donnison