The Breaking Wave - (Vintage International) by Nevil Shute (Paperback)

About the Book

Returning home to his family's Australian sheep station to take the place of his dead brother, Alan Duncan finds his homecoming marred by the suicide of his parents' parlor maid. After he discovers the woman was his brother's fiance, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events.

Book Synopsis

The Breaking Wave is one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II.

Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she pretended to be. Upon discovering that she had served in the Royal Navy and participated along with his brother in the secret build-up to the Normandy invasion, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events and the lonely burden of guilt that unravelled one woman's life. In the process of finding the answer to the mystery, he realizes how much he had in common with this woman he never knew and how "a war can go on killing people long after it's all over."

Review Quotes

"An unadulterated delight. . . . Only in the final pages is the riddle of Janet Prentice's death solved. And at the last Shute leaves us with his own message of compassion tinged with bitterness." --The New York Times

"A novelist of intelligent and engaging quality, deservedly popular.... Nevil Shute was, in brief, the sort of novelist who genuinely touches the imagination and feeling." --The Times (London)

About the Author

Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899 in Ealing, London. He studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. Following his childhood passion, he entered the fledgling aircraft industry as an aeronautical engineer working to develop airships and, later, airplanes. In his spare time he began writing and he published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926, using the name Nevil Shute to protect his engineering career. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they had two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death in 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), A Town Like Alice (1950), and On the Beach (1957).