The Undertow

March 26, 2012
Baker’s saga about four generations of the British Hastings family, beginning with a young William sailing off to WWI, explores the effects of war, poverty, dreams, and the difficulties of love. The story’s tone is set in the seedy Maltese bar where William breaks his wedding vows, dying shortly thereafter in a torpedo attack. Years later, William’s navy buddy Sully shows up to deliver William’s final postcard to his wife and ingratiate himself to her, though his schemes are frustrated by her son, Billy, who eventually marries and fights in WWII. Though he survives, Billy struggles to cope with his son Will’s congenital disability, and the resulting emotional distance leaves both men embittered. Will overcomes his handicap to become a college professor, but is restless in his relationships. The closeness he wishes for with his artistic daughter, Billie, she instead shares with her grandfather. Will and his daughter eventually find common ground through her art after his son from a second wife enlists in the war in Afghanistan. At times the story’s scope threatens to exceed the author’s grasp, but Baker deftly reins it in for the emotionally charged final third. Agent: Anna Stein, Aitken Alexander Associates.

Starred review from April 15, 2012
The architecture of a family, constructed over decades, through relationships, wars and secrets, is assembled with fine detail and insight in an exceptional 20th-century saga. Long, intricate, but never dull, English novelist Baker's U.S. debut is a four-generational span of extraordinary history and ordinary lives, eloquent about the unshared interior worlds of individuals even when connected by the closest of bonds. Starting in London in 1914, it introduces young sweethearts William and Amelia Hastings, married just as World War I begins. Amelia, pregnant with Billy, will always stay faithful to William's memory, tending the album of postcards he sent her, and when shipmate George Sully--a malevolent, recurrent, family-curse character--threatens, Amelia and Billy see him off together. Billy has a talent for cycling, but his prospects, as his own son's will be, are clouded by issues of money and class, and then World War II intervenes. Billy survives to marry Ruby, a stylish Jew who also encounters George Sully but never tells her husband. The couple's first child is Will, partly disabled by Perthes disease, whom Billy struggles to love. Clever Will achieves academic success at Oxford, but marries unhappily. It's with his artistic daughter Billie that the book reaches its understated yet moving conclusion. Immediate, poignant and rarely predictable, this searchingly observant work captures a huge terrain of personal aspiration against a shifting historical and social background. Impressive.

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April 15, 2012

Billy Hastings. This name will be passed down for four generations, as each owner tries to live life to its fullest--some with success, others not. Making her U.S. debut, British author Baker (Offcomer; The Mermaid's Child; The Telling) opens up this touching family drama by introducing us to the first William Hastings and his young bride, Amelia, weeks before he ships off in the navy in 1914 and leaves Amelia pregnant. His son, Will, takes part in the D-day landing of World War II. The third Will becomes an Oxford professor in the 1960s, and his daughter, Billie, is an artist in contemporary London. The unusual narrative structure--short chapters told by different main characters and titled by area, date, and sometimes specific times so the actions described can be literally hours, days, or years apart--is ingenious because readers at times feel they are truly experiencing the story as it takes place. However, it is also a drawback since it is sometimes difficult to get a good sense of a particular character. VERDICT With their masculine pride pushing them to make bad decisions, the three male Billys tend to be a bit unsympathetic to readers, regrettably. Still, Baker's fine writing, the quick-flowing story line, and the excellent ending make this first-rate novel a good choice for fans of family sagas and literary British fiction.--Marianne Fitzgerald, Annapolis, MD

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2012
Unfolding across nearly a century, Baker's story traces several generations of an ordinary English family. Newly married William Hastings is killed at Gallipoli, leaving behind Amelia, his pregnant wife. Later their son, called Billy, goes off to his own war. Up to this point, the novel has fast-forwarded through decades at a time, but time stops during the Normandy invasion, and Baker shows us hour-by hour what Billy is experiencing in battle and what his wife, Ruby, and Amelia are doing back at home. Billy survives, and Billy and Ruby's son, Will, is born soon after. Will goes to Oxford, gets married, and has a daughter, Billie, who is making her own adult life in 2005. No melodrama here. The family secrets stay secret, and except for the wars, there are no big events, just everyday disappointments and joys. Amelia created an album of postcards when she was a bride, and nearly 90 years later, the album ends up in Billie's hands, bringing the novel full circle. Baker does a fine job of making the ordinary extraordinary.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)