---
product_id: 159090091
title: "Beside the Sea"
brand: "veronique olmiadriana hunter"
price: "HK$171"
currency: HKD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 11
url: https://www.desertcart.hk/products/159090091-beside-the-sea
store_origin: HK
region: Hong Kong
---

# Beside the Sea

**Brand:** veronique olmiadriana hunter
**Price:** HK$171
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Beside the Sea by veronique olmiadriana hunter
- **How much does it cost?** HK$171 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.hk](https://www.desertcart.hk/products/159090091-beside-the-sea)

## Best For

- veronique olmiadriana hunter enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted veronique olmiadriana hunter brand quality
- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

Beside the Sea

## Images

![Beside the Sea - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41q+Sn3QLOL.jpg)
![Beside the Sea - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41e-zGJYaML.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    What can I say? I was blown away.
  

*by L***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 8, 2016*

Disturbing. Raw. Poignant. Beautiful.From the first couple of pages, I got a strong sense of gloom -  the bleak existence of this woman and her children. If a child watches his mother sit for hours at a kitchen table doing nothing, it's bound to be about a very unstable situation. This is clarified as the book progresses and provides glimpses of the mother's background. She has a menial job, she has been off and on chemical treatment for a psychiatric condition, and she is regularly visited by a social worker. She also has few teeth, which seems to emphasize her poverty level and perhaps her mental illness.Add to that the constant rain and mud, a crowded bus ride to a drab seaside town in the middle of a cold night, walking with two exhausted young children looking for a hotel. If the mud and rain isn't enough to depress you, the description of the hotel definitely will. It's a filthy, slummy pit that should have met the wrecking ball ages ago and the room is so small, the door can't be fully opened because the double bed all but completely consumes it. Its linoleum floor is brown and sticky. The communal bathroom the little boys must use would be condemned on skid row. And still...the interminable rain.The purpose of the visit - for the boys to see the ocean- is more evidence of her psychopathy. She takes them to the beach in the off season and the children are obligated to enjoy it in spite of the cold and the miserable drizzle.  She's clearly on the edge of insanity when she tells the kids to hunt for  seashells to give to their teachers. The problem is there are none to be found and the boys are freezing cold with still soaking wet clothes from the night before. I definitely got a vivid portrait here of a very unhinged woman. She has no money to feed them, but takes them to a cafe for hot chocolate. After that, unable to further cope with anything, she takes the boys - nine and five years old -  back to the hotel room and goes to bed. There's no TV, no toys and no books (she is fully aware that her 9 year old loves to read), so they sit in a grimy, tiny brown box of a hotel room and watch their mother sleep. It is raining so hard, they could not decipher if it was day or night. They entertain themselves by drawing through condensation on the windows.After hours, she wakes and leaves them alone, returning with a bag of cookies for their meal. She is excited. She has a surprise for them. She has found out there is a carnival in town. As they traverse a field of ankle deep mud, the children are in awe of the clamor of the crowds and rides. The mother gives them money for a few rides and treats them to french fries. But, she has a turning point here and we see her begin to completely slide away from reality, while fixating on a Ferris wheel that seems to take her to an otherworldly dimension. I am not even sure, at this point, she realized her children were with her.What ensues is horrific, but the shock wore off and left me thinking "Am I really surprised?".I highly recommend this book. It has tremendous strength and the potential to break your heart. It's not for everyone and definitely not a lofty beach read, if that's what you are seeking. If you are not, it may absorb you as much as it did me.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Motherhood and Madness
  

*by B***S on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 5, 2023*

A powerfully written and mournful story of a woman who seeks help, but doesn't find it despite the efforts of social services. Everything is damp and tearful. The holiday her young kids have looked forward to enjoying at the seaside, has the sad aspect of an abandoned resort. The holiday food of fries and cookies isn't tasty. Nothing works out as planned. Only the moon is watching and can't help this family.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A disadvantaged mother scrimps to give her sons just one treat, before ...
  

*by B***Y on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 2, 2018*

What Are We Reading?: Beside the Sea, by Veronique Olmi, translated by Adriana HunterRating: 5/5 Broken SeashellsGive me the short version: A disadvantaged mother scrimps to give her young sons just one treat, before ...**spoiler alert! It's difficult to write in any way about Beside the Sea without revealing the finish. But of course, the moment you begin to read you understand it can't end any other way**By chance I read Beside the Sea directly after Jane Gilmore's amazing and heartrendingly honest essay What I Learned About Poverty in Meanjin, which made for quite the one-two punch. On reflection I've come to think this was the perfect introduction and recommend it for companion reading, especially if like me you come from an advantaged background. Think of it as a primer.Beside the Sea is a short and uncompromising. A single mother struggles to provide an unaccustomed pleasure to her two children: a trip to the seaside. You have a front row seat to the disorienting effects of her mental illness, her social isolation, their poverty, and how unpleasant a place the world can be.There are moments of love. They are mostly drowned in the mud of the everyday.A couple of years ago as part of a friend's production of Medea I was in a group of women who were interviewed on love, and what we thought of mothers who kill their children. Some were quick to condemn the culprit, but not so much the grinding everyday life which drove them there, the strictures of society that kept them down.Having flirted with being poor and depressed, those two going hand-in-hand like a couple of assh*les, I recalled a video I'd watched while studying psychology. It was of a mother who'd undertaken exactly what Beside the Sea is about. Her mental illness was now controlled, but her grief and bafflement were so overwhelming I couldn't find it in my heart to blame her. Instead I felt sick and horrified by even that brief brush against the life that had driven her so far.Reading stories like this isn't "enjoyable," unless by dispassionate appreciation of the author's mastery of language (and the translator's!). They are shattering. They stay with you for days, weigh the spirit down. However I think stories like Beside the Sea are essential for developing our empathy.We live in an age of echo chambers, where people too easily become insulated and trigger-happy. We forget that the vast majority of humanity is not like us. Their experiences are invisible to us and unlike ours. Their actions should not be coldly measured by our tape.I think it's critical to read and have some understanding what existence means for a great many people, and how smothering darkness might become the only gesture love has left.Favourite bit:"We'll take her back a seashell, I replied, and I thought perhaps we should do that, choose a seashell and give it to the teacher, my son's first love, yep, give her his first seashell. Now that made Kevin smile, and I was proud of myself, I know how to handle my kids, I thought, I just need to be left to get on with it ..."

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*Product available on Desertcart Hong Kong*
*Store origin: HK*
*Last updated: 2026-02-21*