The Waves Behind The Boat

by Francis King

In a remote corner of Japan, an Englishwoman is drowned by a freak tidal wave. Bill, a young university lecturer, and his wife, Mary, are asked by the Consul to identify the body. On their arrival in the seaside village they are met and befriended by Bibi Akulov, the immensely rich White Russian in whose house the dead woman was staying. For the English couple it is the start of a complex and unnerving relationship with Bibi and her mysterious brother Sasha, a relationship which reveals the darker side of the Akulov household.

186 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Francis Henry King, CBE, was a British novelist, poet and short story writer.

He was born in Adelboden, Switzerland, brought up in India and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964.

He was a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1979 and a Commander of the Order (CBE) in 1985.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

The 26th novel of King for me to read; his 11th book, from 1967.

Although perhaps not quite as shocking as it would have been back when first published, this tale of murderous intrigue still packs a bit of a wallop, with the suspenseful resolution of the central mystery not fully realized till the final few pages. Along with his usual fluid prose, his characterizations here are really stellar, with the beguiling brother and sister team of Bibi and Sasha Akulov being amongst his most intriguing creations. Kudos also for writing the book from the perspective of Mary Warner, the woman caught between the two of them - and doing so seamlessly. Quick-paced, I read the entire thing in less than a day.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I shall resist starting another review of a novel by Francis King by singing his praises or bemoaning his current lack of readers (though I still believe Francis King and his novels are worthy of the highest praise and ridiculously overlooked) and simply insis that who doen't know Francis King at least read his obituary from The Guardian newspaper (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...).
King had a novel career stretching over 63 years from the immediate post WWII years until not long before his death in 2019. Interestingly on the Wikipedia page for British novels written or published in 1967 you will not find this novel but then if you look on the same entry for any of King's other novels in the year they were published you won't find them, and when you see some of the novels listed let it be a reminded of Wikipedia's infinite unreliability.

As for 'The Waves Beneth the Boat' how many ways can I praise it? Let me count the ways - it is superbly written, it is taughtly told tale that is a masterpiece of compression and a superb example of making every word count, his characters are convincing for their time and now, the story is gripping not because of the action but because of the believabilty of everyone and everything in the novel. I could go on ladeling on praise, all of it deserved, but it would become boring and perhaps deflect attention away from the novel.

The 'gay' plot line is handled with, for the time remarkable frankness, but I believe that UK novelists in the 1950s and 60s dealt with the theme with casualness then US authors. In this novel, and others, King deals with homosexual/gay themes (I find it difficult to retrospectively use the term gay) by simply accepting them, there is no attempt to explain or justify and although he portrays some of his homosexual characters as weak or as out shits, it isn't because they are queer but because they are human ans as likely bad as good. Reading the lyrical and homoerotic descriptions of a young male Japanese male character in the novel it will come as no surprise when you learn that King enjoyed his first satifactory long term love affair while working in Japan.

But 'The Waves From the Boat' is not a gay novel nor any sort of lost 'classic' it is a novel by a gay man who was happy to incorporate gay characters and themes because they were part of life. That he was doing in 1967 deserves be noted and, in a way, this novel probably sits better with much 21st century 'gay' writing then those of the Stonewall generation.

A fabulous novel, which explores a mysterious death, but much more interestingly, explores the mysteries of what animates its living protangonists.

I can not recommend this or any of Francis King's other novels or story collections highly enough.