Is it possible to tire of Christmas?
Or in the case of Lizzy Kingham, who LOVES Christmas with furiously bright red and green twinkling lights, great bundles of tinsel strewn everywhere and a kilo ton of fruit mince pieces for every meal, to tire of all the effort that goes into making it happen when your life has suddenly gone uncertain and wobbly, and your family doesn’t seem to particularly care if it all comes together or not?
Yes, as it turns out, it is and in Veronica Henry’s festively cosy but emotionally honest novel, Christmas at the Beach Hut, it turns out that the only solution to all those decidedly un-festive burdensome feelings is to pack quickly and dash for your childhood bestie’s luxury beach hut in Everdene, Devon (fictional but evocative, it turns out, of the town of Woolacombe) where no one knows you, no one is expecting anything of you and you can gather and regroup and work out what the hell to do next.
And everyone expects a lot of Lizzy.
Her family – devoted dad Simon and older teenage twins Hattie and Luke – do love her but have fallen into an all-too-easy groove where Lizzy, an event planner with a selfless knack for making people feeling included and welcome, does everything and they lap it all up, if they bother to turn up at all, which on Christmas tree decorating night, which Lizzy LOVES, they do not.
Desperation at the doctor’s. Humiliation in the changing room. Degradation in the street. And now desertion. And no one to listen. No one to pour her [Lizzy] a glass of wine or give her a hug or tell her she was important.
Fed up with being taken for granted, and wholly uncertain about where her life is heading after a redundancy, Lizzy decides that she needs an uncharacteristic time out and it’s at Everdene that she meets other lost souls who, for a variety of reasons, are trying to find a new way through life.
It’s an unexpected meetings of hearts and minds, all of whom are in need of a family of sorts which Lizzy, who envelops people without effort and with an ability to make them feel instantly at home, provides without thinking and with her trademark ability to get to the heart of what people need.
Even though she’s there to work out what she needs next, she instinctually looks after 18-year-old Harley who has some big family issues not of his making, and dad Jack and three-year-old son Nat who need to get away from an everyday that, once blissfully happy, knows feel they are deadening, grief-stirring weight around their neck.
No one is feeling particularly cheery or festive but somehow over the course of a few days, while Simon, Hattie and Luke go into finding Lizzy overdrive so they can convince her they love and need her more than they can say, everyone comes together in ways that feel like a great warm and grounded hug, the kind that reassures you everything will be okay even though there’s a long and winding road before you get close to even reaching what feels like a far-off and sometimes unreachable point.
Suffused with a real love of Christmas and conjuring all the magic (and stress) of the most wonderful time of the year, Christmas at the Beach Hut is one of those wonderful novels that make you feel as if everything in life can be solved and bettered … eventually.
There are no magical waves of the wand here but even though Henry makes every single character work for their happy ever after, or happier than they were anyway, she doesn’t cheapen where they end up by pretending life’s problems can be fixed simply because the calendar trips over into December.
In fact, there are times in this beautifully wrought novel of festive found family and belonging, that are really quite dark, places where characters have to face up to their mistakes or to admit that they have failed to make life in the image they envisaged.
It’s this honesty about the vicissitude of life that adds some rewarding emotional heft and substance to Christmas at the Beach Hut which doesn’t stint on the soul-lifting buoyancy and escapism of the season but which knows that it comes at a cost sometimes and that even its most ardent fans and practitioners such as Lizzy can find themselves a million miles away from their Christmassy happy place.
But what to do when you get there? Is there an easy fix or even one at all?
‘She was …’ Jack nodded in agreement. ‘And Christmas was her thing. She always made it so special. Which is why I couldn’t face it this year. I’m not strong enough. Every bauble, every carol, every bloody mince pie makes me think she should be here.’ He swallowed and tried to smile. ‘And maybe it’s not fair on Nat, but I’ve tried to do the best I can for him. make it fun.’
‘And unlucky for you, you found us,’ smiled Lizzy. ‘We’re running away from Christmas too. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time.’ She looked between Harley and Jack. ‘Does it?’
Turns out there is and there isn’t; no easy fix, no, but a fix somewhere down the road?
Why, yes, and it has to do with letting go of things, of opening yourself up to others and admitting that despite your best efforts and intentions that you simply don’t have all the answers and that maybe some searing emotional honesty and some shock therapy for yourself and those you love might be what’s needed to mix things up and have them settle into altogether more pleasing form and shape.
For all its willingness to tell it like it is, Christmas at the Beach Hut is first and foremost a story about finding somewhere to belong and people with whom you can be connected and who will have your back as you will have theirs.
It also encourages all of us to never forgo any chance meetings with strangers and dismiss them as nothing because they might lead somewhere quite magical and we could find our lives changed, if not in an instant, then in ways down the track that we might never have envisaged.
The joy of Christmas at the Beach Hut is how much love and warmth packs into it pages; it celebrates Christmas and all its trappings and possibilities in ways that will warm the soul and make your heart sing, but it also knows that life rarely plays neatly to the idealistic notions we hold and that sometimes we need to reach out, reach in, find the people who will make things better and hold tight to them while finding again those things that have always sustained us and that with hard truths and self-aware honesty, will sustain us again, not just at Christmas but all through the year.