This story reached in and took hold of my heart from the first page, gently in the beginning, then slowly applying pressure, bit by bit, until it finally squeezed it in a vice-like grip, from which I am still recovering!
In 1992 Drew is a twelve year old boy who has come from Minnesota to the Australian seaside town of Queenscliff in Victoria, where his step-father is based in a military operation on Swan Island nearby. Drew meets Tom, a boy his own age and they become friends.
Drew is now thirty-nine, back in Minnesota, married to Claire and working on his second novel when he finds through social media that Tom has been killed in an explosion on his boat in Queenscliff. Drew decides to go to Queenscliff for Tom’s funeral and once there begins to relive those days in 1992, having become acquainted with Tom’s twelve year old son, Adam.
Matthew Ryan Davies digs deep into Drew’s thoughts with such sensitivity and fragility that I only gradually became aware there was so much going on beneath the surface of Drew’s narration. This is a beautiful, powerful, psychological exploration into friendship, grief and post-traumatic stress, and no one who reads it will be unmoved.
I highly recommend The Broken Wave and I am now going to look for Matthew Ryan Davies’ earlier book, Things We Bury. He is my new favourite author!
Published by Pan Macmillan
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