Hallam returns from prison to his childhood home – a dilapidated house on the sea-battered north Cornish coast, a place where land and water embrace in perennial, furious exchange, where he ekes out a living repairing nets, the spectral presence of wreckers and smugglers riding the south-westerly. It is a home built on a tapestry of sound: a dozen different winds, waves that growl and pummel, the rark of gulls. A place to heal, to forget.
But when a young Romanian woman strides fully-clothed into the sea one evening, their interlocked fates serve only to marshal all the brutality of Hallam’s past life. EVERY SEVENTH WAVE is a literary tale of the fates we tether ourselves to, how seemingly benign encounters can provoke both hope and devastation. Read a review here. ‘True to the realities of its Cornish location and the torque of its characters' histories, this is a story of contemporary urgency - vividly written, morally complex, unforgettably moving.’
Graham Mort ‘A stunning novel of precarious lives lived on the fringes, and suffusing the whole thing, the sea's implacable presence. I found it touching, moving and disturbing in equal measure.’ Wyl Menmuir ‘Compelling, intense, bracing and raw as the waves themselves.’ Miriam Darlington |
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‘The writing is like old magic, working its way inside. Beautiful and searing.’ Ríona Judge McCormack ‘The novel grips from the first page with a sense of lurking danger and characters who have within them the sea's silent depths.’ Linda Cracknell ‘Tom Vowler writes with attentiveness and empathy, crafting a moving and compelling story of love, loss and the possibility of redemption.’ Ben Smith |