The Waves

Six friends speak in interwoven soliloquies from childhood through education, work, marriage and middle age, while recurring descriptions of the sea measure the passage of a single day. Their identities develop in relation to one another and to Percival, an idealised friend whose departure for British India and sudden death alter the group permanently. Rather than presenting a conventional historical plot, the novel records the formation of a generation across Edwardian and interwar society. Schooling, professional life, colonial service, artistic ambition and changing relationships become part of its wider study of individual and collective experience.