67 pages • 2 hours read
Emily HenryBeach Read
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love as an Escape From Darkness
The theme of love as an escape from darkness is well-established in Beach Read and shapes the interactions January has with those around her. From the very beginning, this theme presents itself through January’s narration. January begins to believe in the power of love at a young age. Her dad taking the family dancing in response to her mom’s cancer diagnosis sparked January’s love of love and belief that “when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing” (3). This belief shapes January’s entire life as well as her interactions with others. She decides that filling her life with love and romance is “not just for my own benefit, but for Mom’s, and for everyone else around me” (3). Throughout the book, January often recalls feeling like she needs to show off her perfect life full of love to her family to assure them that things are okay in the bad times. Particularly after her mom’s second cancer diagnosis, January “tucked every ugly thing out of sight to transform my life into a shiny window display for her benefit” (86). She wants badly to assure her parents, especially her mom, that her life is great and full of love. When she brings Jacques around them, she “paraded our happiness past them as often as I could” (87). At that point, January seems to believe that love will act as a cure for the dark times.
January’s discovery of romance novels reinforces this belief. In the waiting room at her mom’s oncologist appointment, she picks up a romance novel and finds herself devouring it: “It was the first wave of relief I’d felt in weeks” (88). Now, as things have gotten scary in her life, she’s found an escape not in love from people but in the love she reads about, leading her to dedicate her career to writing the same things, determined to uplift others the way romance novels uplifted her. Her perspective on love only deepens during this second cancer diagnosis: “Mom’s first diagnosis taught me that love was an escape rope, but it was her second diagnosis that taught me love could be a life vest when you were drowning” (89).
Later in the novel, January applies this philosophy on love to Gus, wishing she’d known him during his abusive childhood, thinking, “I couldn’t have changed anything, but I could have been there. I could have loved him” (236). Even though she understands she could not rescue Gus from his circumstances, she still feels that loving him would have made a difference for him and brought light to his dark childhood.
January has a very strong belief in the power of love to combat darkness—a belief she applies to her parents, her relationships, and her craft. She fills her life with an abundance of love and romance with the hopes that it will spill onto those around her and make their lives, as well as her own, better.
People as Representations of Light and Darkness
Throughout Beach Read, the two leads, January and Gus, seem to share a philosophy on the way people affect those around them, relating them to the concepts of light and darkness. January feels the need to illuminate those around her. In reference to her ex-boyfriend, Jacques, she says “we were intent on glowing for each other” (117). January frequently tried to be the perfect person for Jacques, to match his energy and create a dynamic love story. However, January couldn’t keep up this light for Jacques when she faced her own darkness. Jacques didn’t know how to handle January when she went through her dad’s death. January narrates, “I’d just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else” (118), illustrating that she had provided the light in the relationship, and without her, the relationship crumbled. Gus jokingly refers to Jacques as “Golden Boy,” which is an appropriate metaphor for how Jacques didn’t light up for January the way she lit up for him—he merely reflected the light that January brought to the relationship. When January stopped “glowing” for Jacques, Jacques left her. January acknowledges, in hindsight, that in quiet moments, “when we weren’t gleaming for each other” (206), she and Jacques weren’t a perfect match.
Gus recognizes this light in January. He doesn’t communicate that idea to her right away, but he talks to January about his parents, referring to them as “this black hole and this bright light he was always trying to swallow whole” (204). Gus saw his mom, who tried to protect him from his dad’s abuse, as a bright light who positively influenced those around her. He saw his dad as a black hole: not just darkness that needed illuminating, but a void that destroys light, because of how he put in effort to destroy Gus and Gus’s mom. Gus worries that he’s also a black hole, which is why he distances himself from January, afraid he’ll put out her bright light. January assures him, “You’re not a black hole. And you’re not your father either” (204). However, at this moment, January doesn’t know Gus sees her as the bright light. He reveals that to her later on, as they walk along the beach discussing their personal issues. January worries that Gus thinks her life is perfect, but Gus clarifies, “It’s not about what’s happened. It’s about how you cope with things” (225), going on to say, “You’ve always been this fierce fucking light, and even when you’re at your worst, [...] you still know how to be a person. How to tell people you—you love them” (225). Gus’s perception of January as a bright light comes not from her positive life, but her positive attitude in the face of life’s hardships. He sees differences in the way she deals with things through pouring her love outward and the way he deals with things by shutting off to the world. He later tells her that he sees this light in her writing as well, saying he’s always admired “the way your writing makes the world seem brighter” (293).
January and Gus both tend to see light in those around them. This light, emanating from within the person, illuminates the rest of the world around him or her. January strives to be a person who illuminates the darkness, and Gus recognizes this trait in her and is drawn to her because of it.
Writing as an Emotional Outlet
As Beach Read is a novel whose two main characters are writers, writing as an emotional outlet is a pervasive theme throughout the text. January and Gus are both former creative writing majors who have gone on to publish multiple books. Writing is a familiar process to them, but both suffer from writer’s block at the beginning of the novel. January specifically is dealing with this block because of her pent-up emotional turmoil surrounding her dad’s death and the discovery of his affair. January is used to writing romance novels with happy endings, but now she’s struggling because “it helps if you believe in them” (13). January had no problem “[spitting] out drafts faster than I could type” back when “true love had seemed like the grand prize, the one thing that could weather any storm” (45). Now she cannot bring herself to unload these romantic emotions into a new novel because she is congested with negative emotions.
When January and Gus make a bet to switch genres, January feels the wheels “turning in my head—wheels that had been out of order for the past year” (78). The idea of writing bleak literary fiction appeals to her in her current state: “Maybe a depressed writer could only make a depressing book” (81). The first time she sits down to work on her new genre, she finds that “words were coming out of my hands and it had been so long since that had happened” (89). January is able to channel her dark, negative emotions into a story that, at first, is a carbon copy of her tumultuous family drama. Despite her concerns about exploring a new genre, she makes significant progress on the manuscript: “whether or not I was actually succeeding at this book, I was writing it. It came in painful ebbs and desperate flows” (93). As the memories and painful emotions well up within her, January releases them onto the page, observing, “It wasn’t my life, but it was close” (93).
As the novel progresses, so does January’s manuscript. Her characters, originally thinly veiled stand-ins for the people in her life, evolve into more original and three-dimensional characters while still maintaining problems that reflect her own. When January becomes worried that Gus is purposefully avoiding her, she makes significant progress on her book, deciding, “Writing [...] would be my solace” (165). Near the end of the summer, January realizes her life in North Bear Shores has become more complicated, and she becomes stressed out about where she and Gus will be once she sells the house. Within this stressed-out frenzy, she is able to finish her manuscript, “writing at a speed I hadn’t reached since my first book” (303)
January also comes to realize that Gus writes to understand his own emotions. When Gus talks about exploring dark themes to try to understand why his mom didn’t leave his dad, January realizes, “Gus was writing to try to understand something horrible that had happened to him” (134). January and Gus share more than an interest in writing—they share a deeper connection with the outlet, and this allows January to understand Gus more as a person. While healing wounds from her dad and working through her unfolding story with Gus, she is able to channel emotions into writing, eventually completing the manuscript that she owes her agent. Writing acts as both a reflection of January’s emotions and an outlet for them.
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By Emily Henry
