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Beautement: This Day
Loss has left Ella Spinner alone to care for her husband, Bart, who suffers from clinical depression. Their days now echo the any progress made, rolls back. Yet Ella keeps pushing against the monotony. Set in Mossel Bay, Ellaís day begins like any other. But on this day the minutes begin to crack allowing change to filter through. As we cheer on her tenacity, weíre left asking ourselves what motivates anyone to try again.
177 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 4, 2014
27 people want to read
About the author
Tiah Beautement
10 books70 followersTiah Marie Beautement is an American-Brit and the author of two novels, including the award nominated This Day (2014, Modjaji) and numerous short stories. She is the managing editor of the The Single Story Foundation’s journal, teaches writing to all ages, and freelances for a variety of publications including the Sunday Times and FunDza. In her spare time she has been spotted riding horses and as pillion on a motorcycle on the South African Garden Route.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 1, 2018
- Every day we begin again. -
November 12, 2014
Possibly the worst has happened to Ella. Not only has she lost her small son Kai under tragic circumstances, but she has also lost her husband. Bart might be there physically, but his spirit is locked away in a profound depression. Though the couple wants for nothing when it comes to their material needs, they no longer have much in the way of a relationship. Ella sits by helpless as Bart seems to drift further and further away, and the therapist isn’t helping.
At the heart of the matter, Ella is lonely, and at her wits’ end. In her self-imposed exile caring for Bart and his depression, she has become incapable of connecting meaningfully with other people. On top of that, she is unable to process her own grief and look after her own needs – simply going through the motions though on the outside she seems to be coping better than her husband.
Some of Ella’s behaviour might, to an outside observer, even seem bizarre – for instance her habit of digging in portions of her son’s cremated remains with the vegetables that she grows. In her own way, Ella is trying to bring Kai back to life.
She might be lonely, but Ella is not completely alone. Her friends care, and in their own ways try to get Ella to reach beyond herself and her diminishing orbit around Bart. His depression is an almost palpable entity that has taken on a life of its own, and has displaced their relationship. Bart uses Ella as a shield between himself and the real world, and Ella enables him by constantly trying to anticipate his needs.
No one talks about Bart’s depression, but they’re all aware of it.
Threaded throughout the novel is the theme of water – at first benign and life-giving, but then the separator, that takes her son away from her. The ocean is forbidding and a barrier that prevents Ella from confronting herself. It is something vast that she must face, and immerse herself before she can attain acceptance.
Ella must let slip some of her need to control before she can make peace with the fact that there are aspects of her life that remain forever altered – her son’s death and her husband’s psychological state. It’s how she chooses to engage with the ebb and flow of the tides that matters.
This Day is a bittersweet moment in time that Tiah Beautement has captured beautifully. Although the story is slow-moving, it is beautifully rendered and, like water, is reflective and steeped in emotion.
At the heart of the matter, Ella is lonely, and at her wits’ end. In her self-imposed exile caring for Bart and his depression, she has become incapable of connecting meaningfully with other people. On top of that, she is unable to process her own grief and look after her own needs – simply going through the motions though on the outside she seems to be coping better than her husband.
Some of Ella’s behaviour might, to an outside observer, even seem bizarre – for instance her habit of digging in portions of her son’s cremated remains with the vegetables that she grows. In her own way, Ella is trying to bring Kai back to life.
She might be lonely, but Ella is not completely alone. Her friends care, and in their own ways try to get Ella to reach beyond herself and her diminishing orbit around Bart. His depression is an almost palpable entity that has taken on a life of its own, and has displaced their relationship. Bart uses Ella as a shield between himself and the real world, and Ella enables him by constantly trying to anticipate his needs.
No one talks about Bart’s depression, but they’re all aware of it.
Threaded throughout the novel is the theme of water – at first benign and life-giving, but then the separator, that takes her son away from her. The ocean is forbidding and a barrier that prevents Ella from confronting herself. It is something vast that she must face, and immerse herself before she can attain acceptance.
Ella must let slip some of her need to control before she can make peace with the fact that there are aspects of her life that remain forever altered – her son’s death and her husband’s psychological state. It’s how she chooses to engage with the ebb and flow of the tides that matters.
This Day is a bittersweet moment in time that Tiah Beautement has captured beautifully. Although the story is slow-moving, it is beautifully rendered and, like water, is reflective and steeped in emotion.
December 23, 2014
A meticulously crafted novel about a day in the life of a grieving woman. Having lived through the worst imaginable ordeal for a parent, Ella now has to take care of her husband who is suffering from severe depression. As each heart-breaking day dawns, she leaves massages in the sand for the sea to wash away. It is in the water that she also confronts her deepest hopes and worst fears. Poetic, full of insights, and simply beautiful, THIS DAY is an remarkable achievement.
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April 10, 2015This Day is a tidal book, it moves with the waves as it gives us Ella's story - a mother without a son, a wife without a husband.
It is a story about how women are expected to shelve their own grief in order to care for others. In this case, the woman who has lost her child must deal not only with her own grief and guilt, but must submerge it under first caring for her hated MiL's own guilt and self-erosion, and then her husband's, all while trying to come to terms with the way in which she deals with the loss herself (and the images of feeding her son's ashes into the soil and eating "him" are wonderful and poignant and broke me.)
The frank eye turned to living with someone with depression is refreshing. And I admire Beautement for that: as a sufferer myself, I am only too aware just how unpleasant and annoying being with someone like me can get. It's something that I think people don't like to face when we tell relatives and friends how to handle others with depression - that eventually, there is no more room for empathy, then for pity, until finally there is space only for revulsion and irritation.
If that makes the book and the narrator sound unsympathetic, I don't mean it to. Simply that This Day is honest and painful and beautifully written.
It is a story about how women are expected to shelve their own grief in order to care for others. In this case, the woman who has lost her child must deal not only with her own grief and guilt, but must submerge it under first caring for her hated MiL's own guilt and self-erosion, and then her husband's, all while trying to come to terms with the way in which she deals with the loss herself (and the images of feeding her son's ashes into the soil and eating "him" are wonderful and poignant and broke me.)
The frank eye turned to living with someone with depression is refreshing. And I admire Beautement for that: as a sufferer myself, I am only too aware just how unpleasant and annoying being with someone like me can get. It's something that I think people don't like to face when we tell relatives and friends how to handle others with depression - that eventually, there is no more room for empathy, then for pity, until finally there is space only for revulsion and irritation.
If that makes the book and the narrator sound unsympathetic, I don't mean it to. Simply that This Day is honest and painful and beautifully written.
November 8, 2014
Haunting, elegiac, This Day is a book that worms its way into you as you read. The reading is compulsive, even when your heart is in your mouth and you don't want to turn the page because you know that the story is going to take you deeper into the sorrow that is Ella Spinner's life.
Ella took me into one day of her life - this one day where I watched her move through the chore of getting on with a life that has been torn apart by tragedy. What that tragedy was, I didn't know at first, but I did learn very quickly that it had left her husband Bart a shambling wreck and put Ella in the position of having to tend to him as best she could while having to manage her own grief.
Ella's day is described in minute detail and each minute that ticks by is another minute she has survived. Glimmers of light break through the water, wry self deprecation made me smile even as I cried.
Ella took me into one day of her life - this one day where I watched her move through the chore of getting on with a life that has been torn apart by tragedy. What that tragedy was, I didn't know at first, but I did learn very quickly that it had left her husband Bart a shambling wreck and put Ella in the position of having to tend to him as best she could while having to manage her own grief.
Ella's day is described in minute detail and each minute that ticks by is another minute she has survived. Glimmers of light break through the water, wry self deprecation made me smile even as I cried.
June 17, 2016
“Every day we begin again.” Every day Ella performs her own private ritual in homage to her son, Kai. Over the course of the day, the story of how he died is slowly revealed. The nature of his death is truly a bitter pill to swallow. Her struggle to live while shrouded in grief at times seems futile to her but something inside her compels her to continue. This Day is an exploration of the all-consuming nature of grief and the way every moment is laden with the knowledge that the extinguished life is absent. This may sound morbid but Ella also has an acerbic wit and this counters the sadness.
Bart, Ella’s husband, has completely given up. He has sunk into such a deep depression that he is unable to function at all. He no longer works, no longer surfs, and spends most of his time in bed, emerging occasionally to collapse in a heap on the hammock. The honesty of her thoughts is both refreshing and amusing. The therapist tells her she should approach him with profound gentleness. What she would “dearly love to do is toss a bucket of water across this slumbering heap.” He will only communicate with the therapist who seems to undermine all Ella’s efforts. She has become “the filter between her husband and the outside world“. Therefore, she grieves for the loss of her husband and her son. Yet she cannot really give in to her own grief.
The novel is set in Mossel Bay, which is a first for me. I do not remember reading a novel set there before. The small town atmosphere is described well; sea, mountain and town all play a part in the action. This dimension enhances the narrative, adding texture and appealing to the senses.
This one day that we spend with Ella is an ambitious one. She is to dust off her camera for the first time in a year and photograph her friend, Kamala, who is married to Thad, the Greek (both delightful characters). She has arranged for Bart to meet with his work colleagues at lunchtime but she cannot be sure if he will make it and she has a separate assignation with Luxolo, one of Bart’s colleagues, later in the afternoon. As she is about to leave a man called Dylan arrives at the gate, wanting to work in her garden. He is a very intriguing character and she agrees to employ him. The awkwardness she feels at a stranger being privy to their fractured lives is very well put across.
The photo session Ella has with the pregnant Kamala is one of my favourite parts of this novel. Before it begins they have a discussion on the difference between pornography and erotica; the descriptions of Kamala as she poses are as evocative as a photograph and while Ella photographs she reflects on the nature of a photograph and what recording a moment means, as well as how little it can mean. This mixture of action accompanied by philosophical musings is what makes this novel special.
This Day is a perceptive, intriguing mix of desperation, hope and acerbic wit. It offers no easy remedies but invites the reader to journey with Ella as she tries to overcome her own bitterness and her frustration with her husband, laced with fear that her husband will kill himself. One of the reasons I love reading fiction is to learn and understand the human condition. Despite the sadness of the topic, this novel achieves this and leaves the reader feeling enriched.
Bart, Ella’s husband, has completely given up. He has sunk into such a deep depression that he is unable to function at all. He no longer works, no longer surfs, and spends most of his time in bed, emerging occasionally to collapse in a heap on the hammock. The honesty of her thoughts is both refreshing and amusing. The therapist tells her she should approach him with profound gentleness. What she would “dearly love to do is toss a bucket of water across this slumbering heap.” He will only communicate with the therapist who seems to undermine all Ella’s efforts. She has become “the filter between her husband and the outside world“. Therefore, she grieves for the loss of her husband and her son. Yet she cannot really give in to her own grief.
The novel is set in Mossel Bay, which is a first for me. I do not remember reading a novel set there before. The small town atmosphere is described well; sea, mountain and town all play a part in the action. This dimension enhances the narrative, adding texture and appealing to the senses.
This one day that we spend with Ella is an ambitious one. She is to dust off her camera for the first time in a year and photograph her friend, Kamala, who is married to Thad, the Greek (both delightful characters). She has arranged for Bart to meet with his work colleagues at lunchtime but she cannot be sure if he will make it and she has a separate assignation with Luxolo, one of Bart’s colleagues, later in the afternoon. As she is about to leave a man called Dylan arrives at the gate, wanting to work in her garden. He is a very intriguing character and she agrees to employ him. The awkwardness she feels at a stranger being privy to their fractured lives is very well put across.
The photo session Ella has with the pregnant Kamala is one of my favourite parts of this novel. Before it begins they have a discussion on the difference between pornography and erotica; the descriptions of Kamala as she poses are as evocative as a photograph and while Ella photographs she reflects on the nature of a photograph and what recording a moment means, as well as how little it can mean. This mixture of action accompanied by philosophical musings is what makes this novel special.
This Day is a perceptive, intriguing mix of desperation, hope and acerbic wit. It offers no easy remedies but invites the reader to journey with Ella as she tries to overcome her own bitterness and her frustration with her husband, laced with fear that her husband will kill himself. One of the reasons I love reading fiction is to learn and understand the human condition. Despite the sadness of the topic, this novel achieves this and leaves the reader feeling enriched.
May 14, 2016
Ella Spinner has recently lost her young son to drowning and her husband to acute depression – it’s at times like this that the time-worn mantra, one day at a time, becomes so necessary if a person is to continue living with any sense of direction.
I found time amongst holiday visits with my children yesterday to read This Day from cover to cover, and I found it evocative and insightful with the protag's unstated wobbles along, and from, the line over which lies the abyss very powerful.
I found time amongst holiday visits with my children yesterday to read This Day from cover to cover, and I found it evocative and insightful with the protag's unstated wobbles along, and from, the line over which lies the abyss very powerful.
May 15, 2016
A beautifully written book. Clever, witty and deeply touching.
January 1, 2018
As Ian McEwan showed in his masterful novel, Saturday, so little can happen in a day – and so much. In This Day, Tiah Beautement gives an hour-by-hour account of a day in the life of Ella, who is not only struggling to survive the death of her child, but also the withdrawal from life of her husband. Candid yet sensitive, Beautement draws the reader into the depths of Ella's despair while never allowing her to seem unrealistically helpless. We see her frustration, fear and fury, and are reminded that no matter the circumstances, we always have choices. This Day is not light, uplifting novel, but I was thoroughly entertained by it throughout. It is tightly written and engaging, and the story lingered long after I'd read the final word.
October 28, 2020
A cleverly crafted short novel on one day in the life of a couple grieving a common loss, each in their own way. So much can happen and change in one day, while it may feel that all is the same.
"They say grief never disappears; but with time some people can learn to adapt and live with grief rather than in grief".
"They say grief never disappears; but with time some people can learn to adapt and live with grief rather than in grief".
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews