It's riveting reading a well-plotted, artfully constructed multigenerational story where there are long-held secrets. It's especially moving when the family clearly loves each other but still find it difficult to confess things that are destroying their lives. This is the case with the three generations of women portrayed in “Lullaby Beach”. The story begins when teenager Lucy goes to visit her great-aunt Kitty in her dilapidated seaside home and discovers she died from taking an overdose of pills. Over the course of the story Lucy's mother Beth and Sara seek out what really happened to this spirited, independent woman and why she chose to end her life in this way. Sections of the novel move back and forth between the decades to show that it's not only Kitty who was compelled to conceal the truth. Many secrets are gradually uncovered. The story compassionately shows how we can become entangled by circumstances and are driven by fear to make desperate decisions - especially when being coerced or cornered by domineering men.
This novel portrays a particularly compelling sister relationship. Sara and Beth are quite different from each other. They have a strong bond, but feelings of competitiveness and jealousy underline a lot of their actions. Details such as the way Beth's daughter Lucy is naturally drawn to confiding in Sara over her mother show how family dynamics can grow to form inbuilt tensions. Duffy is also very good at building larger social issues into the specificity of her stories. She shows the way particular characters in different time periods are marginalized by overt or inbuilt racism. There's also a class system at play in the small seaside town at the centre of the novel. The longterm residents of this community are being systematically cut out of receiving the financial benefits from the redevelopment and rejuvenation of their surroundings.
But the central theme of this novel is the many ways women are silenced by shame. Though Kitty is an adventurous, forthright and intelligent individual she becomes stuck in an abusive relationship in which she's exploited. All too often society is quick to judge the victim from the outside and say a person being abused should just leave, but Duffy portrays the emotional, financial and social circumstances that can lead to the continuation of this painful situation. At one point Sara describes how “We get ashamed of something we think the world disapproves of, but shame's more about something we know ourselves is wrong. Or maybe it's something that's wrong in others and we feel it because of them, because of how they've been to us.” Stella Duffy's novel poignantly shows that this shame can lead to longterm secrets – especially with the people we love the most.
