Heather Frese’s novel The Saddest Girl on the Beach is an unforgettable story of love, loss, and hope.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“A metaphor-rich, coming-of-age, contemporary novel about finding your equilibrium while experiencing overwhelming grief.”
In her own words, here is Heather Frese’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Saddest Girl on the Beach:
The Saddest Girl on the Beach is the story of a young woman who loses her father and runs away to the wintry, isolated island of Cape Hatteras to deal with, or avoid dealing with, her grief. Charlotte McConnell is nineteen, not quite herself yet, when grief unmoors her. Her best friend, Evie Austin, has just found out that she’s pregnant. Charlotte uses this as a reason to leave school and stay with Evie at her parents’ inn on the Pamlico Sound. Charlotte and Evie must navigate their relationship as they enter these new, drastically different turning points in their lives, as well as dealing with Charlotte’s questionable and hurtful romantic choices.
That’s what the story is about, but what it’s about is finding your way through deep grief; it’s about the ebb and flow of life and death, the bitter and the sweet, science and faith, beauty and terror, romantic and platonic and familial love; it’s about embracing and celebrating all of this as life, all of this as part of our collectively gorgeous, terribly difficult journey on this precarious planet—these songs capture that same soaring bittersweetness.
Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
Charlotte is caught in a landslide of grief when she arrives at the little yellow inn on the Pamlico Sound. Can the child within my heart rise above?/Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?/Can I handle the seasons of my life? Those are the questions in her heart as Charlotte struggles to both find her footing and help Evie make some difficult choices.
Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.
Sometimes everybody cries, and when Charlotte is caught in the deepest recesses of her own mind, she leans on physical pain and physical pleasure to bring her back into a reckoning with the world. Charlotte realizes the pleasurable part of this equation is something that’s achievable with Evie’s older brother, Nate.
Graceland by Paul Simon
Charlotte and Nate take Evie, in medical crisis, to the hospital through a storm that eats away the road. In this incongruent environment, Charlotte feels her first spark of pleasure with Nate, and the lurch of herself rising out of her grief for the first time feels like a human trampoline—falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil. I also love this song for the losing love is like a window in your heart/Well, everybody sees you’re blown apart/Everybody feels the wind blow lyric, which is exactly how Charlotte feels. And then another love interest appears, one that is unavailable, inappropriate, attractive, and deeply understands Charlotte. Her heart, mind, and body spiral into both choices. Whoa, so this is what she means.
Come Undone by Duran Duran
Evie makes it through her crisis, decides to have her baby, and plans a wedding to her questionably suitable boyfriend, Stephen. The first frictions in Evie and Charlotte’s friendship appear as Charlotte tries to dissuade Evie from marrying Stephen. Now we’ll try to stay blind to the hope and fear outside/Hey child, stay wilder than the wind and blow me in to cry/Who do you need?/Who do you love?/When you come undone is how Charlotte feels about Evie’s little waterfront wedding.
After All by Dar Williams
Go ahead push your luck/Find out how much love the world can hold. Charlotte continues to push her luck and see how far she can take both romantic relationships, which serves to crack open her frosted shell of grief. She arranges to have her dad’s ashes put out to sea in the summer, when her family arrives, and her relationship with Evie teeters more precariously the closer Charlotte comes to hurting Evie’s brother. And still, Charlotte’s grief returns in waves to the point of overwhelm. Well the whole truth/Is like the story of a wave unfurled/But I held the evil of the world/So I stopped the tide froze it up from inside/And it felt like/A winter machine that you go through and then/You catch your breath and winter starts again/And everyone else is spring bound. Charlotte isn’t quite spring bound yet, though the world is turning that direction.
Mother and Child Reunion by Paul Simon
Charlotte’s family arrives on the Outer Banks, and Charlotte, who has been working at the inn and living as a resident, switches gears to join her family and their close family friends at a beach house at the end of Hatteras Village. After months apart from her mom and brother, Charlotte finally joins them in grieving together.
In My Life by The Beatles
Before and after are colliding in this section of the novel, as the person Charlotte has become in her months on Hatteras clash with who she was before, who her family and friends knew her to be. In this in-between-ness, Charlotte comes to appreciate her before-ness, the love and stability granted to her by her family and friends. Some are dead and some are living/In my life, I’ve loved them all.
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
I chose this song for the scene where Charlotte’s family scatters her dad’s ashes into the ocean. The lyrics aren’t an exact match, but the feeling the song evokes, the cold and broken hallelujah of love and loss, is perfect.
Sinnerman by Nina Simone
This song began to play at Starbucks as I was deep in revision of Saddest Girl. I was right at the part where Charlotte is making aggressively bad romantic choices, and the Sinnerman lyric resonated. So did I’m gonna run to the river, I’m gonna run to the sea, since running is what Charlotte does best, but the sea is bleeding and boiling; the sea can’t hide her now.
If It Makes You Happy by Sheryl Crow
The reverberations of Charlotte’s choices shake through her entire support network, hurting Evie, Nate, and Charlotte’s family members. But Charlotte doubles down on her romance, which is lifting her out of her grief and into new heights.
Norwegian Wood (This Bird has Flown) by The Beatles
This song is for Nate, a kind, honest person who Charlotte leaves behind. Nate deals with the betrayal in the classiest way possible, but the hurt cuts deep.
Bad Blood by Taylor Swift
As Charlotte’s family leaves the beach, Charlotte is left to deal with Evie’s hurt and anger over how Charlotte’s choices hurt Nate. Their relationship ends on a frosty note in this section.
No Tears Left to Cry by Ariana Grande
Summer turns to early fall, and still Charlotte remains on Hatteras Island, still working at the inn, still entangled with her not-Nate romantic choice. Evie is still pregnant, but not for much longer. With a storm approaching, Charlotte embraces the energy, dedicating herself to winning Evie back and reforging their friendship. We’re way too fly to partake in all this hate is what she thinks, but Evie needs a little more convincing.
If You Leave by Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark
Charlotte planned to leave Hatteras at Christmas, but as Evie’s labor approaches, Charlotte realizes her time with her lover, her friend, and the island has come to an end. She needs to leave on her own terms, and before she changes her mind.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole
Evie’s baby is born. Charlotte goes back to Ohio, back to college, back to her life, but she’s forever changed by love and loss and learning she experienced during her nine months on Hatteras Island.
Bonus track: Cherish by Kool and the Gang
This song used to play quietly from the radio that sat behind my desk in my sixth-grade classroom, and the gently rushing waves and cawing gulls in the opening would make me cry because I missed the beach. I’m putting this song in for that personal melancholy which led me to set my fiction on Hatteras Island, and because Charlotte learns to move forward with her life, cherishing the bittersweetness of it all.
Heather Frese is the author of the novel The Baddest Girl on the Planet, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize. The book was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was named one of the Women’s National Book Association’s Great Group Reads. She attended Ohio University for her M.A. followed by an M.F.A. in fiction from West Virginia University. Her latest novel The Saddest Girl on the Beach is out now. Connect with Heather at HeatherFrese.com.