What a pleasure to talk to archivist and historical fiction writer Renée Belliveau about her second novel A Sense of Things Beyond, and about how her work in archives (and childhood spent reading the “Dear Canada” series for young readers!) inspires her fiction today. A Sense of Things Beyond is set in the 1920s and is about two people whose WWI experiences don’t accord with the memorialization of the war ongoing at the time—Rose, who saw the bloody reality of war as an army nurse, and Frederick, who spent the war as a civilian prisoner in Germany where he’d been studying when the war was declared. Both characters are drawn together in their isolation and trauma from what they experienced, and their stories serve to complicate more straightforward war narratives.
Belliveau tells me about Mary Borden’s book The Forbidden Zone, a collection of poetry and short fiction inspired by Borden’s own experiences as a war nurse, a collection that wasn’t published until 1929, when the reading public finally was ready for work that took on more realistic and complicated narratives of war experiences.
In the aftermath of the First World War, two souls struggle to find their place in a world they no longer recognize.
Rose, a nurse who tended to the wounded near the frontlines, has returned to her quiet life in Toronto to find that her family home no longer offers any comfort. Only a few years earlier, she reached France brimming with eagerness to contribute, but as she found herself healing soldiers only to send them back to the trenches, the senseless brutality of war became clear—especially once her nephew Leo enlisted.
Meanwhile, Frederick is trying to reclaim the thread of his life interrupted by war. On the verge of completing his PhD when Germany declared him an enemy alien, he spent the next four years languishing in an internment camp where thousands of men from the British Empire crowded into unheated horse stables. But now he wonders if his anger at his unjust treatment was misdirected.
Their paths cross as each is trying to bridge the chasm between who they once were and who they have become. As Rose and Frederick navigate the fragile promises of a new world, their shared sense of disillusionment becomes a language of its own. Might they find solace in each other?
Past and present intertwine in A Sense of Things Beyond, revealing how each shapes the other. It is a gorgeously written examination of what comes after war, and how we hold remembrance.
Renée Belliveau is the author of the novels A Sense of Things Beyond and The Sound of Fire, which was named a Quill and Quire book of the year and shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Novel Award, as well as the memoir Les étoiles à l’aube.
She draws inspiration from her work as an archivist, where she spends her days surrounded by records of the past. In addition to her books, she has written several articles exploring lesser-known aspects of Canadian and regional history.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Allison University, a Master of Arts from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Information from the University of Toronto. A proud acadienne originally from Shediac, NB, Renée now lives in Dartmouth, NS, with her husband.
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