Review: Breaking Wave by Nevil Shute

This cover is awful!!!

My Interest

I year or two ago I started reading through the long list of Nevil Shute’s books. He was an engineer and his “other” career is mentioned in the book His Majesty’s Airship (my review is linked). Nevil Shute Norway, his full name, writes the kind of books I miss when I finish them.  Yes, there are the occasional cringe moments due to thoughts and opinions changing over the years, but that’s part of reading old books. This one appealed to me because it is a World War II vet’s story–perfect for the 80th anniversary of my Grandfather and the others landing in Normandy on D-Day.

The Story

“I had travelled the world and I had come to realize, in faint surprise, that I had seen no countryside that could compare in pastoral beauty with that of my own home. It takes a long time for an Australian to accept the fact that the wide, bustling, sophisticated world of the northern hemisphere cannot compare with his own land in certain ways;”

“When things like this happen there’s just nothing to be done about it; even suffering itself is a mere waste of time.”

“When you and I are dead, and all the rest of us who served in the last war, in all the countries,” she said, “there’ll be a chance of world peace. Not till then.”

Aussie Alan Duncan, formerly an RAF pilot (RAF not RAAF), has returned to his family’s sheep station in Australia to a dead house parlor maid. The death is regarded as a suicide, but that puzzles those who knew her. Alan pieces the story together and tells it, and his own story, going back over the details of the war, of his brother in the Royal Marines and himself in the RAF, and of their friends and acquaintances. Alan realizes the girl is not who she claimed to be and that the story is much sadder than a mere suicide. A Rhodes Scholar and newly minted solicitor, Alan has the skills and know how to piece it all together.

The book is set both in the south of England and in Australia

My Thoughts

The stories of Alan, his brother Bill, and Janet, show the reality of war. How in such times of heightened activity and intense focus a fleeting moment truly can be life changing. It isn’t the risk of being killed that’s the big thing, or even being “crippled” as Alan calls his luck, but it is the connections forged with people –sometimes that one very special person that matters. I could relate to this–I’m still, 25 years on, great friends with several people from what I term my “dream job” back in the 90s. That rush of adrenaline in doing what you love and doing it even under safe everyday “pressure” makes the friendship so lasting. In war, as someone in the book says, “living in a [barracks] with 30 others everyone finds a friend” [paraphrase]. Add in the constant danger and the stakes involved in truly saving the world–well people have to get better at judging who to trust and who to like.

I liked the character of Violet, too. She was very “stiff upper lip,” no “whinging” [whining]. Almost clinical in her approach to a relationship, she, too, was a victim of war but too much of a survivor to let herself fall to pieces over a man. But Violet went on with her life–she had a place of her own and a job that really a career. That showed real fortitude.

Janet’s feelings of God’s retribution were troubling, but not unusual–especially 80 years or so ago. People were more literal about faith. It was sad to see Janet’s path. Sad to see she couldn’t think beyond her war work to a new role. Of course, aside from a few small schemes, the UK, being all but bankrupt, had no “GI Bill” even for the men, so for a woman–well…education and training just wouldn’t happen. Sad.

I liked Alan, and what I heard of Bill. The way they just wanted to fit in and got tired of trying to explain how you could attend the “Eton of Australia” but be a mere “sheep farmer” seemed so typical of what we today know as “The Greatest Generation.” At least here in the USA you were brought up thinking either “you’re just as good as anyone else” or “you’re no better than anyone else” depending on your situation. Alan also looks back in shame at his very understandable self-pity and self-focus following his RAF career-ending injuries. (This brought Downton Abbey to mind–Sir Anthony and his “mus’n’t complain” due to his useless arm, and of course, never ask for help).

The widely-held view of the day, expressed more than once in the book, of a woman needing a family to tend to make her whole and healthy is, of course, troubling to many today. I chafe at it even though I’m divorced and later adopted children. It isn’t for everyone. I had great role models from this same generation who eschewed that view and lived their own lives very differently. No surprise then, that the one small thing that bothered me was Alan’s assurance at the very end that his phone call would result in exactly what he wanted. [No spoilers].

Finally, this book was interesting because like another book I recently read, Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes, it ends up where it started. [But that is about all the books have in common].

My Verdict

4.25

This book was simply excellent. I listened to the audio version.

My reviews of other Nevil Shute books:

• What Happened to the Corbetts? (aka The Ordeal)
• Pastoral 
• The Far Country 

I’ve read A Town Like Alice twice, both times before the internet or blogging existed. I highly recommend it.

This cover isn’t much better