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    Breaking Wave
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    Breaking Wave
    Unavailable
    Breaking Wave
    Audiobook8 hours

    Breaking Wave

    Written by Nevil Shute

    Narrated by Patrick Tull

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Allan had been away from Coombaragana, flying in the Royal Air Force. Now he has returned, wounded and disillusioned, to his ancestral home. Days before, Jessie Proctor had taken her own life. Why? Allan looked at the young face in the photograph in Jessie’s passport and froze. He knew who she really was.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateSep 30, 2011
    ISBN9781461812319
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Breaking Wave

    4.5/5

    19 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Should bring back more audio books by Neil Shute. Such an exceptional writer! Enjoyed this book and A Town Like Alice.
    • 5/5
      A beautiful albeit sad love story. If it is a happy or a sad ending is up to the reader.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      One of the nice things about Shute's writing style is that he can make a point—in this case, the lasting damage to people's lives caused by war—without the reader feeling like they've been beaten with the proverbial stick. The message is there but you can still sit back and enjoy the story.Given his theme, this isn't one of his uplifting books like Pied Piper or Trustee from the Toolroom that leave you smiling at the end. Much of the book is told in a flashback manner and so the reader knows from the opening pages of a woman's suicide that this is going to be a sad one. The upbeat note when the story finally gets back to the present and moves beyond it isn't enough to obscure the feeling of the damage caused by the past...nor is there any sense that Shute wanted to do so.I can't say this is one of my most-enjoyed Shute novels because I am very enamored of the warm feelings I get from some of his other books. However, it's the most complex of any I've read so far. The main characters were rich and alive for me and I felt their struggles with their war experiences. Shute's approach of giving a bit of the present story and then moving back into the past to illuminate it gave me the sense that I was constantly learning more about who these people were.An odd thing: I usually don't have much reaction to a book's title. It's an identification mechanism for me and not much more. However, I found myself very disappointed in the American publishers of this book. The original, British/Australian title of Requiem for a Wren captured this book perfectly for me.
    • 4/5
      "Requiem for a Wren" was first Nevil Shute book I ever read, back in 1973 a Christmas gift from a school friend. I've lost touch with the friend, but I will always thank her for introducing me to Nevil Shute.As much as I love this novel, it is an inherently sad story. We know from quite early in the book that Janet has committed suicide. The rest of the book is telling her story of joining the Wrens in World War 2, falling in love with Bill (brother of the narrator Alan), her shooting down of the German aircraft, and how she conflates the deaths of those in the aircraft with the deaths of those she loves, driving herself into depression and unable to find a purpose in her life after she is invalided out of the Wrens.Like a number of Nevil Shute novels, one of the book's main theme is the impact of war on the lives of ordinary people, particularly young people. How it forges them, how it destroys them, and how it leaves them floundering to adjust when the war is over. In Requiem for a Wren, the story is overtly about what the war did to Janet, but it is also less overtly about what the war did to Alan (the narrator) and other characters.We know that Janet has no happy ending, but the novel ends with the hope that Alan might have a happier future.There are a couple of Nevil Shute's other favourite themes in the book but in a relatively muted way. Nevil Shute loves aviation and pilots (he was an aeronautical engineer and pilot himself), and in Requiem for a Wren our narrator Alan is a former pilot. However, unlike some Nevil Shute novels (Round The Bend, The Rainbow and the Rose), aviation is not the setting for the story. Flying and aircraft do feature in the story but only in an incidental way. For example, Alan's injuries really could have been sustained in a car accident or from a bomb rather than a plane crash. Similarly Janet's angst is caused by deaths on an aircraft but could have been from other kinds of deaths. However, Nevil Shute's own experiences with aviation means that the use of flying-related incidents in the storyline allow the novel to have the detail that gives it a very authentic feel.Another Nevil Shute theme we see in this book is his unfavourable comparison of England post-WW2 against Australian and North America. However, in Requiem for a Wren he does not emphasise it as much as he does in The Far Country and In The Wet; again, it is more in the background texture of the story and might not be discernible if you were not familiar with his other works.
    • 4/5
      Alan Duncan returns from England to his families ranch in Australia, but his happy homecoming is marred by the housekeepers suicide. He takes it upon himselg to track down her diaries and letters and to follow her self destructive journey that ended so tragically far from home.For those who have never read Nevil Shute before I can only provide a bemused blank stare. Admittedly he is not for everyone; he wrote about a time and place that is alien to us and to be honest had disappeared by the time he wrote it, but in this case it works in its favour. Shute vividly captures Britain in WWII, it's effects on ordinary people and he does this so well that you are caught up in tragedy hoping for a happy ending you know doesn't exist. Not only this you are also learning a great deal about a slice of history, part of Shute’s brilliance is to take dull facts and mesh them into a highly emotional story.He does have his faults, the plotting on this one is a little forced although ultimately forgivable and whilst he tries to provide a glimmer of hope I quite frankly didn't notice through the tears. Still at least it's not as depressing as On the Beach.Mandatory reading for all history buffs, but also anyone who loves a good weepy.
    • 5/5
      Nevil Shute writes very well about effects of war on individuals' lives. This is a good example. Told sort of backwards (in that we know what eventually happens to the main character within a couple of chapters, the story explains how she arrived there), it's a fascinating account of life as a Wren in WWII. Shot through with a feeling of nostalgia and profound regret, I found this book unputdownable. The ending could be interpreted as tragic or uplifting, depending on your mood.
    • 4/5
      This is a lesser known classic from one of our loved authors( On the Beachand A Town Like Alice). This is a beautifully told love story set duringthe war about an English woman ,a Wren in the airforce who meets anAustralian soldier who is then killed in battle . His brother returns to Australianow with a permanent disability following the war to his family farm only todiscover that the day before his arrival the house maid has committedsuicide. To say anymore would spoil it for anyone who would be interested inreading this wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      This story has haunted me for a long time. It tells the story of a man who tries to relive the past - the yearning to have things be the way they used to be, and why it doesn't work. The sadness is pervasive, and I find myself using it to haul myself out of the past. I've read it twice, and likely will again sometime - more as medicine for my soul.