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Things We Lose in Waves
'Brilliant' DAILY MAIL
'Moving . . . the characters are so vivid and memorable, I couldn't stop thinking of them' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
'An elegant, assured novel about family, friendships, secrets and the push-pull of home' PRISCILLA MORRIS
Jenny's world is falling apart.
Ravenspurn is falling into the sea. The little town is perched on a remote cliff, and every day, frequent storms are claiming more land, more homes and more livelihoods.
The news of her father's sudden death forces Jenny's return to her hometown from London, but the ravaged landscape now feels like a foreign place. In a small town like Ravenspurn, the rifts between her and those she once knew are so deep they threaten to swallow her whole.
Jenny is now responsible for her late father's small pub, and its staff, Alex and Si - her former best friend and ex-boyfriend, now a couple. She's stuck living in her childhood bedroom, orbiting awkwardly around her distant mother. Her boyfriend is still in London, separated by more than just distance. Each day that Jenny remains, the town seems to shrink around her, but she knows soon the pandemic will be over. Soon, she'll be able to return to her real life.
But the secrets and the unspoken regrets that have come to haunt Jenny are not so easily escaped. In the claustrophobia of Ravenspurn, where can she turn?
A timely story of a home pushed to the breaking point; Things We Lose in Waves explores how you keep afloat when your world is falling away from underneath your feet.
'Filled with complex characters and exquisite writing' LOUISE HARE
'Emotionally rich . . . this is a beautiful, atmospheric work' ELIZABETH MCKENZIE
'A writer to watch' LAURIE PETROU
'Moving . . . the characters are so vivid and memorable, I couldn't stop thinking of them' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
'An elegant, assured novel about family, friendships, secrets and the push-pull of home' PRISCILLA MORRIS
Jenny's world is falling apart.
Ravenspurn is falling into the sea. The little town is perched on a remote cliff, and every day, frequent storms are claiming more land, more homes and more livelihoods.
The news of her father's sudden death forces Jenny's return to her hometown from London, but the ravaged landscape now feels like a foreign place. In a small town like Ravenspurn, the rifts between her and those she once knew are so deep they threaten to swallow her whole.
Jenny is now responsible for her late father's small pub, and its staff, Alex and Si - her former best friend and ex-boyfriend, now a couple. She's stuck living in her childhood bedroom, orbiting awkwardly around her distant mother. Her boyfriend is still in London, separated by more than just distance. Each day that Jenny remains, the town seems to shrink around her, but she knows soon the pandemic will be over. Soon, she'll be able to return to her real life.
But the secrets and the unspoken regrets that have come to haunt Jenny are not so easily escaped. In the claustrophobia of Ravenspurn, where can she turn?
A timely story of a home pushed to the breaking point; Things We Lose in Waves explores how you keep afloat when your world is falling away from underneath your feet.
'Filled with complex characters and exquisite writing' LOUISE HARE
'Emotionally rich . . . this is a beautiful, atmospheric work' ELIZABETH MCKENZIE
'A writer to watch' LAURIE PETROU
416 pages, Hardcover
Published November 2, 2023
4 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Ayrton
2 books7 followersLucy Ayrton is Communications Manager of a prisons charity, and much of ONE MORE CHANCE is informed by the people she has met and the time she has spent in prisons, especially on the Holloway Mother and Baby Unit.
She has an MA in Creative Writing from Warwick University, and is a lively presence on the performance poetry scene. She wrote and performed two full-length spoken word shows at the Edinburgh Festival: Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry, recipient of the PBH Best Newcomer Award, and adapted into a pamphlet with Stewed Rhubarb Press.
The Splitting of the Mermaid was a winner of the Ideastap Members Presents: Preview Season and was performed at Underbelly. She also blogs as Lucy In The Pub With Cider, about literature, feminism and baking. Lucy is lives in Oxford.
She has an MA in Creative Writing from Warwick University, and is a lively presence on the performance poetry scene. She wrote and performed two full-length spoken word shows at the Edinburgh Festival: Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry, recipient of the PBH Best Newcomer Award, and adapted into a pamphlet with Stewed Rhubarb Press.
The Splitting of the Mermaid was a winner of the Ideastap Members Presents: Preview Season and was performed at Underbelly. She also blogs as Lucy In The Pub With Cider, about literature, feminism and baking. Lucy is lives in Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 5, 2023
This book made me feel deliciously uneasy, as I waited for something or someone to plunge off Ravenspurn’s gloomy clifftops into the sea. Every sentence is taut and pared-down, and the dialogue crackles with life. The setting – a depressed Northern town with one pub (‘The Railway’) and a ‘shut-up fish and chips bars’—is as atmospheric as any Gothic castle. The death of Jenny’s father kicks the story off, forcing her to leave her job and boyfriend in London and head back to her childhood home. Soon, the pandemic traps her there, and she’s got to deal with her distant mum, Alison and her resentful childhood friend Alex. On top of that, having inherited The Railway from her dad, Jenny is now expected to keep it going—and during shutdown. Keeping the pub in the black is no easy task at the best of times since the town’s holiday caravans are falling into the sea, and the grand clifftop hotel is now a ruin where teenagers smoke and flirt with the abyss. This novel searchingly examines how losing a parent can transform all your important relationships and it also shifts your perspective on raggedy Ravenspurn. It might seem like a dump to your average tourist swinging through, but tight communities like that are hard to find. For me, one of the pleasures of a novel is getting a window into a different world, whether it’s World War II-era Japan or the Yorkshire moors. As someone who lives in the south of England and hasn’t spent much time in the north, I absolutely loved getting to know this place and its inhabitants.
May 12, 2024
March 2020 and Jenny returns to her home town for the funeral of her father, the local publican. The novel moves between 2020 and 2004 when Jenny was a student with ambitions to go to uni and become a solicitor. Told from three perspectives, Jenny, Alex (Jenny's contemporary) who didn't leave, and Jenny's London based boyfriend Ben. Of the three Alex was certainly the strongest character for me.
I quite enjoyed this book. It was both an easy read but also one with an underlying tension as Jenny learns more about her past and reconnects with the small coastal community which is slowly falling in to the sea, literally. Some covid references and somewhat predictable, but held my interest.
I quite enjoyed this book. It was both an easy read but also one with an underlying tension as Jenny learns more about her past and reconnects with the small coastal community which is slowly falling in to the sea, literally. Some covid references and somewhat predictable, but held my interest.
January 11, 2024
Set during the pandemic in a forgotten part of England, where the land falls into the sea. As the main character gets trapped following new lockdown rules she chafes against he place she tried so hard to leave. Characters very believable as well as the village itself.
November 20, 2023
It is March of 2020 and Jenny Fletcher is back on a desolate stretch of coast battered by the North Sea in the tiny town she grew up in, and which she has spent her adult life trying to leave behind - for her father's funeral. Jenny only plans to stay for a couple of days to perform her daughterly duties before heading back to her real life in London, until a national lockdown is announced and she finds herself trapped in a dying town, her only company her distant mother and all the other people she left behind, including her first love, Si, and her sometime friend/sometime rival, Alex.
Things We Lose in Waves (author Lucy Ayrton's second novel) is told from three perspectives - Jenny, Alex and Jenny's boyfriend, Ben, and the narrative flits between various points in 2020 and 2004, just before Jenny left Ravenspurn and Alex stayed. Of the three, Alex feels like the most fully realised, consistent character, and I found her chapters by the far the most interesting.
Having read a host of recent books that feel very consciously set in 2019 in order to avoid having to deal with the aftermath of the pandemic, it's refreshing to read a novel that faces it head on. It is a bold choice though: 2020 is such a recent - and, for many people, raw - period in history, of which everyone who lived through it has such specific memories, that readers will inevitably be scrutinising the book for accuracy and relatability.
The novel weaves a slew of Covid hot topics into its narrative - the early ambiguity over what was or was not allowed; stockpiling and shortages; furlough and working from home (if you could); masks and hand sanitiser; shielding and the urge to police one another's behaviour. Some of these work well, such as the subtle way Alex and Si's story highlights how the pandemic widened the gap between the haves and the have nots. Others felt forced - notably the section of the novel which focuses on Jenny's boyfriend, Ben, who visits from London between lockdowns and spends his time judging everyone's approach to the pandemic, making uncharitable assumptions about his girlfriend and preaching about Black Lives Matter.
This part of the book was a real low point for me, and I found Ben to be a deeply unlikeable character, which I'm really not sure was the author's intention. From the beginning of the story, Jenny notes how she has felt forced to compartmentalise her life in London and her childhood in Ravenspurn in order to start afresh and be her own person, yet Ben seems determined to assume the worst of her at every juncture and makes no attempt to try to understand what it might be like growing up in a place where everyone made up their mind about you long ago. When she tries to explain how important community is to a declining town like Ravenspurn, he shuts her down immediately because ‘It’s not getting killed by the police, though, is it?’ On this note, I am always wary of white authors writing as Black characters, especially when discussing racism; it doesn't feel like our story to tell, especially when the publishing industry still elevates white voices.
A real strength of the book is the language the author uses to paint Ravenspurn as an almost gothic setting, all crashing waves and crumbling cliffs, particularly in contrast to 'the shine and hard lines of London.' The gradual, inexorable way in which the town is being reclaimed by the sea thanks the coastal erosion is an apt metaphor for the town's inhabitants. Just as they are resigned to the periodic loss of the caravans that perch on the cliff's edge, and to the inevitable eventual disappearance of the ruined hotel, so the townsfolk have accepted their lot as one of poverty, unemployment and limited prospects. They personify the simmering resentment many people in the north, particularly the rural north, felt towards Londoners whom they perceived - rightly or wrongly - to have had an easier time during the pandemic. Some of the characters feel very exaggerated and unlikely, but as a group they provide a realistic depiction of the ennui that can set in if you never leave your hometown. In Ben's part of the book, it was interesting to see the townsfolk clash with someone they saw as representing this privileged urban elite, and to see how impossible it was for Jenny to straddle the divide - they want to reject her as they feel she rejected them, and yet she will never be able to turn her back on them for good.
Some of these historied dynamics are intriguing, but more than one is explained away in a handful of sentences, leaving some key plot points just glossed over. The big reveal is so heavily signposted that it looms opressively over the narrative, an anvil waiting to drop, which only serves to make the reader exasperated with the main character - how did Jenny not know?
Overall, though there were elements of the book I enjoyed, it never quite added up to more than the sum of its parts.
Thank you to NetGalley and Dialogue Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.
Things We Lose in Waves (author Lucy Ayrton's second novel) is told from three perspectives - Jenny, Alex and Jenny's boyfriend, Ben, and the narrative flits between various points in 2020 and 2004, just before Jenny left Ravenspurn and Alex stayed. Of the three, Alex feels like the most fully realised, consistent character, and I found her chapters by the far the most interesting.
Having read a host of recent books that feel very consciously set in 2019 in order to avoid having to deal with the aftermath of the pandemic, it's refreshing to read a novel that faces it head on. It is a bold choice though: 2020 is such a recent - and, for many people, raw - period in history, of which everyone who lived through it has such specific memories, that readers will inevitably be scrutinising the book for accuracy and relatability.
The novel weaves a slew of Covid hot topics into its narrative - the early ambiguity over what was or was not allowed; stockpiling and shortages; furlough and working from home (if you could); masks and hand sanitiser; shielding and the urge to police one another's behaviour. Some of these work well, such as the subtle way Alex and Si's story highlights how the pandemic widened the gap between the haves and the have nots. Others felt forced - notably the section of the novel which focuses on Jenny's boyfriend, Ben, who visits from London between lockdowns and spends his time judging everyone's approach to the pandemic, making uncharitable assumptions about his girlfriend and preaching about Black Lives Matter.
This part of the book was a real low point for me, and I found Ben to be a deeply unlikeable character, which I'm really not sure was the author's intention. From the beginning of the story, Jenny notes how she has felt forced to compartmentalise her life in London and her childhood in Ravenspurn in order to start afresh and be her own person, yet Ben seems determined to assume the worst of her at every juncture and makes no attempt to try to understand what it might be like growing up in a place where everyone made up their mind about you long ago. When she tries to explain how important community is to a declining town like Ravenspurn, he shuts her down immediately because ‘It’s not getting killed by the police, though, is it?’ On this note, I am always wary of white authors writing as Black characters, especially when discussing racism; it doesn't feel like our story to tell, especially when the publishing industry still elevates white voices.
A real strength of the book is the language the author uses to paint Ravenspurn as an almost gothic setting, all crashing waves and crumbling cliffs, particularly in contrast to 'the shine and hard lines of London.' The gradual, inexorable way in which the town is being reclaimed by the sea thanks the coastal erosion is an apt metaphor for the town's inhabitants. Just as they are resigned to the periodic loss of the caravans that perch on the cliff's edge, and to the inevitable eventual disappearance of the ruined hotel, so the townsfolk have accepted their lot as one of poverty, unemployment and limited prospects. They personify the simmering resentment many people in the north, particularly the rural north, felt towards Londoners whom they perceived - rightly or wrongly - to have had an easier time during the pandemic. Some of the characters feel very exaggerated and unlikely, but as a group they provide a realistic depiction of the ennui that can set in if you never leave your hometown. In Ben's part of the book, it was interesting to see the townsfolk clash with someone they saw as representing this privileged urban elite, and to see how impossible it was for Jenny to straddle the divide - they want to reject her as they feel she rejected them, and yet she will never be able to turn her back on them for good.
Some of these historied dynamics are intriguing, but more than one is explained away in a handful of sentences, leaving some key plot points just glossed over. The big reveal is so heavily signposted that it looms opressively over the narrative, an anvil waiting to drop, which only serves to make the reader exasperated with the main character - how did Jenny not know?
Overall, though there were elements of the book I enjoyed, it never quite added up to more than the sum of its parts.
Thank you to NetGalley and Dialogue Books for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.
October 4, 2023
I wanted to like this. Local small town drama in a town falling into the sea sounded like something I'd enjoy. But I just, didn't.
Every single character was unlikeable, but not in a purposeful way. I have little to no patience for people who seem to go out of their way to have crap lives just so they can complain about it. And Alex lived her whole life going 'waaa nothing ever works out for me' while doing nothing about it. Why was everyone in the town so aggressive about everything? Why was Ted painted as the good guy when he was as shifty as everyone else?
I felt like lockdown was an unnecessary inclusion, I hope not all authors decide to do a covid storyline as basic as this, it feels like a cop out.
Jenny and Ben were an odd pairing, there was nothing at all that made me care about them and I was glad when they broke up, and annoyed that they got back together.
Plus, i don't know the race of the author, but if she is anything other than black then she shouldn't have tried to write a section of the book from the perspective of the only black character as he experiences racism. And the chapter written from 8 year old Alex was weird as well.
Also the term 'pass agg'. No no no.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC but this wasn't for me.
Every single character was unlikeable, but not in a purposeful way. I have little to no patience for people who seem to go out of their way to have crap lives just so they can complain about it. And Alex lived her whole life going 'waaa nothing ever works out for me' while doing nothing about it. Why was everyone in the town so aggressive about everything? Why was Ted painted as the good guy when he was as shifty as everyone else?
I felt like lockdown was an unnecessary inclusion, I hope not all authors decide to do a covid storyline as basic as this, it feels like a cop out.
Jenny and Ben were an odd pairing, there was nothing at all that made me care about them and I was glad when they broke up, and annoyed that they got back together.
Plus, i don't know the race of the author, but if she is anything other than black then she shouldn't have tried to write a section of the book from the perspective of the only black character as he experiences racism. And the chapter written from 8 year old Alex was weird as well.
Also the term 'pass agg'. No no no.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC but this wasn't for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 19, 2023
Jenny has recently returned to Ravenspurn on the Yorkshire coast to attend the funeral of her father when the pandemic lockdown of 2020 is announced, forcing her to stay in the town she was desperate to leave as a teenager. The bleak town is slowly disappearing into the sea whenever a storm hits thanks to coastal erosion and the place is steeped in strained relationships and secrets.
Setting a book in a place and among people who are facing struggles can provide a really compelling background in fiction but it's a fine line between struggling and relentlessly bleak. This book veered towards cliche for me in its descriptions of the people of the town - there were far too many stereotypes, every character seemed to be strained to the limit to fit a type and it made them all both unbelievable and unlikeable. The constant warning of "there's a storm coming" felt overdone and repetitive rather than creating an atmosphere of tension and, although the main character was repeatedly said to be not as thick as she appeared, she did seem absolutely clueless about the central secret which was so obvious from the start that I found it hard to believe that was the big unveiling at the end.
All the big secrets and problems between characters were set up as major issues and then resolved in a couple of paragraphs and again, that meant the tension was undermined. Apart from a very odd and gothic final shock twist that seemed a little pointless, it settled into a happy ending that felt trite.
There was some nice writing in the book but the plot and characters didn't really work for me, I'm afraid.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.
#ThingsWeLoseinWaves #NetGalley
Setting a book in a place and among people who are facing struggles can provide a really compelling background in fiction but it's a fine line between struggling and relentlessly bleak. This book veered towards cliche for me in its descriptions of the people of the town - there were far too many stereotypes, every character seemed to be strained to the limit to fit a type and it made them all both unbelievable and unlikeable. The constant warning of "there's a storm coming" felt overdone and repetitive rather than creating an atmosphere of tension and, although the main character was repeatedly said to be not as thick as she appeared, she did seem absolutely clueless about the central secret which was so obvious from the start that I found it hard to believe that was the big unveiling at the end.
All the big secrets and problems between characters were set up as major issues and then resolved in a couple of paragraphs and again, that meant the tension was undermined. Apart from a very odd and gothic final shock twist that seemed a little pointless, it settled into a happy ending that felt trite.
There was some nice writing in the book but the plot and characters didn't really work for me, I'm afraid.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in return for an honest review.
#ThingsWeLoseinWaves #NetGalley
February 28, 2024
I struggled to really get into this book - I'm unsure if it was a formatting issue with the kindle version, or whether this was actually the author's intention, but there are no markers of scene changes. Sometimes a scene will begin in a new paragraph, sometimes within the same paragraph as the scene before - call me old-fashioned, but what is wrong with chapters?? Again I don't know if this was an intentional choice, but it can be very disorienting to be reading about a scene taking place in a pub, for example, and suddenly we are on top of a cliff with no warning.
The main characters are quite unlikeable, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it becomes very hard to root for them, or understand their actions. Jenny in particular is very hard to stomach at times - she really gives privileged white woman vibes who's never had to deal with anything going wrong in her life before. The way that she talks about her life in London slipping away (when she's literally been back home for less than a day) is so dramatic that it's hard to take her seriously. At first I didn't mind this, as it is clearly the point when we read about Alex's POV, and we see how the way Alex views Jenny is similarly as a privileged girl who doesn't know true hardship. Alex's character is an interesting one and I enjoyed reading about her life, however I felt this was all for nothing by the end, seeing as her and Jenny just becomes best friends as if they haven't been hating each other's guts the whole time. The only likeable character is Ben, Jenny's London boyfriend, who comes to visit her in her little town and clearly has the same sense of bewilderment and disdain that I had reading about them. Once again however, his likeability is negated by the fact that he gets back together with Jenny by the end. I wanted to scream at him to run a mile!
I also felt like there were some inconsistencies in the timeline of Alex and Jenny finding out about the truth of their relationship with Ted and each other. I don't want to give away spoilers, but there are moments when Jenny acts surprised at what she is learning, when previously there was mention that she already knew it.
The main characters are quite unlikeable, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it becomes very hard to root for them, or understand their actions. Jenny in particular is very hard to stomach at times - she really gives privileged white woman vibes who's never had to deal with anything going wrong in her life before. The way that she talks about her life in London slipping away (when she's literally been back home for less than a day) is so dramatic that it's hard to take her seriously. At first I didn't mind this, as it is clearly the point when we read about Alex's POV, and we see how the way Alex views Jenny is similarly as a privileged girl who doesn't know true hardship. Alex's character is an interesting one and I enjoyed reading about her life, however I felt this was all for nothing by the end, seeing as her and Jenny just becomes best friends as if they haven't been hating each other's guts the whole time. The only likeable character is Ben, Jenny's London boyfriend, who comes to visit her in her little town and clearly has the same sense of bewilderment and disdain that I had reading about them. Once again however, his likeability is negated by the fact that he gets back together with Jenny by the end. I wanted to scream at him to run a mile!
I also felt like there were some inconsistencies in the timeline of Alex and Jenny finding out about the truth of their relationship with Ted and each other. I don't want to give away spoilers, but there are moments when Jenny acts surprised at what she is learning, when previously there was mention that she already knew it.
February 17, 2024
I really enjoyed this clever, thoughtful story with a powerful sense of place. I love books like this, that weave together multiple perspectives to gradually reveal hidden truths about the characters, their relationships, their histories and buried secrets.
The book is written with wit and compassion for the characters and their situations, and effectively finds universal experiences and themes in the very specific scenario of a coastal town crumbling into the sea. Would definitely recommend.
The book is written with wit and compassion for the characters and their situations, and effectively finds universal experiences and themes in the very specific scenario of a coastal town crumbling into the sea. Would definitely recommend.
November 17, 2024
Things We Lose in Waves is an intense, claustrophobic insight into how the past shapes our present. It lays bare the innermost secrets and fears of Jenny and Alex, leaving the reader affected and emotional. My full review can be found on the My Weekly website.
July 18, 2024
Interesting to read a book set in the pandemic and with it playing such a central role. Brought another aspect to a classic return to roots story.
May 26, 2025
An impulse buy - which grew on me as did the characters. A bit too neat, plot wise I think.
August 1, 2025
I've never wanted to slap every character of a book so bad In my life.
June 25, 2025
Following the death of her father, Jenny returns home to Ravenspurn, a small town on the Yorkshire coast, for her father’s funeral. She left the seaside town fifteen years ago to pursue a career in London as a lawyer and has returned home very little in this period. In this time, the cliffs have further eroded, and the town is dangerously close to being enveloped by the sea, and it has become even more oppressive and depressing; Jenny is hopeful she will not be there long. That is, until the COVID pandemic swept the globe, resulting in an enforced lockdown and entrapment in Ravenspurn. Her relationship with the ones she left is strained, including her mother, ex-boyfriend Si, and the ever-complicated bond with Alex. Jenny longs to escape back to the bustling city of London and reunite with her boyfriend Ben, but she will be tied to Ravenspurn for perpetuity after inheriting her late father’s popular pub and discovering the true nature of relationships. With a plethora of secrets in this small town, the rifts between Jenny and those she once knew threaten to swallow her whole.
Told through multiple perspectives of complex characters, Things We Lose in Waves explores grief and loneliness, as well as helplessness regarding the increased erosion of our seaside towns. This book will be perfect for those who enjoy character-driven works of literary fiction.
I know they were complex, but I really did not like a single character in this book.
Told through multiple perspectives of complex characters, Things We Lose in Waves explores grief and loneliness, as well as helplessness regarding the increased erosion of our seaside towns. This book will be perfect for those who enjoy character-driven works of literary fiction.
I know they were complex, but I really did not like a single character in this book.
dnf
July 12, 2024DNF'ing at 20%, no rating. Even getting to 20% was a chore because I'm just not into it and can't get into it. Not for me, but thanks to NetGalley for the copy!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews