The Last Wave
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Gillian Best, winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Short Fiction, weaves a striking literary debut centred on one woman’s relationship to the sea in this sweeping intergenerational family saga.
A beautifully rendered family drama set in Dover, England, between the 1940s and the present day, The Last Wave follows the life of Martha, a woman who has swum the English Channel ten times, and the complex relationships she has with her husband, her children, and her close friends. The one constant in Martha’s life is the sea, from her first accidental baptism to her final crossing of the channel. The sea is an escape from her responsibilities as a wife and a mother; it consoles her when she is diagnosed with cancer; and it comforts her when her husband’s mind begins to unravel.
An intergenerational saga spanning six decades, The Last Wave is a wholly authentic portrait of a family buffeted by illness, intolerance, anger, failure, and regret. Gillian Best is a mature, accomplished, and compelling new voice in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Best's flawed debut follows the life of an English Channel swimmer over six decades. It begins in 1947 in Dover, the coastal town where many cross-channel swims start. Martha is 10 years old when she falls off the pier into the sea and almost drowns. Her father's friend saves her and then teaches her to swim and she is hooked. Over the course of the novel, Martha swims the channel 10 times. The sea is an escape, a comfort, a challenge, and a home for Martha, helping her deal with life's mundane responsibilities and dramatic crises. Though much happens in the story Martha develops cancer; her husband, John, banishes their daughter, Iris, from the family home after she comes out as a lesbian; and John is later diagnosed with Alzheimer's too much of it is taken up by repetition that reinforces character traits but doesn't surprise or flesh out other dimensions of their characters. There often isn't enough build up to the action, and so it lurches rather than flowing smoothly. The book is a good attempt but it doesn't make a big splash.
