The Waves Burn Bright by Iain Maloney


The Waves Burn Bright
Title : The Waves Burn Bright
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1910449822
ISBN-10 : 9781910449820
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 272
Publication : First published May 16, 2016

In 1988 the Piper Alpha oil platform off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, exploded killing 167 men. The Waves Burn Bright is a deeply affecting, sensitive portrait of its devastating aftermath on one family.

Carrie Fraser is 16 when the disaster occurs, her father Marcus, one of the survivors. As the narrative moves between past and present we learn that the trauma blows open existing fractures, tearing the family apart. In adulthood, Carrie, now a respected volcanologist, is returning to Aberdeen, having spent many years abroad, to deliver an academic paper. She and her father are estranged, partly due to his post-traumatic stress and related alcoholism, a legacy of Piper Alpha. Will a reconciliation be possible or will the aftershocks of a tragedy that occurred 25 years before continue to drive father and daughter apart?

"This novel deserves a wide readership. It will resonate with anyone who remembers the night of Piper Alpha; with anyone suffering PTSD, for any reason; with those trying to love them and live with them; with those trying to treat them; and with those more generally interested in understanding this area of human experience. It is also simply a compelling and highly engaging story, told with insight and compassion." Alison Miller, author of Demo

"A cauldron of a book, bubbling with anger and magma which might at any moment spill over and bring further devastation. It is both particular to this tragedy in 1988, but also universal; a compelling story exploring how a father’s trauma sends shock waves through a family, changes the pattern of lives – particularly his daughter’s – and makes love risky. However, as well as being about damage and running away, it is also about healing."
Linda Cracknell, author of Call of the Undertow and Doubling Back


The Waves Burn Bright Reviews


  • Del

    This was sensational. I almost felt physically drained by the end of it. Alcohol abuse isn't peculiar to Scotland, but sometimes it can feel as though it is, and there's no shortage of families who are familiar with what Carrie (and her mother, who it's easy to think of as the villain here, but families of alcoholics know it's not as simple as that) has gone through trying to wrestle the tiger that is her father's addiction. Not that Marcus has had an easy time of it himself. And while it's easy to identify with the impact of addiction, PTSD is something I have no direct knowledge of - but it's dealt with in a manner that hits like a punch to the gut at times, but is also deeply sad, very touching, and enormously satisfying.
    I was only 11 years old when the Piper Alpha disaster took place, but that, along with Lockerbie, cast a long shadow over Scotland for years to follow. I remember a boy I was at school with telling me he was staying over at a friend's house when it happened - the friend's dad was on Piper Alpha, and the phone call came in the middle of the night. He said it was a horrible thing, having to witness that raw grief first hand.
    I particularly enjoyed the section, in Hawaii - maybe it was because some real happiness crept into Carrie's life in the sunshine, away from the gloom of Dunedin and the permanent storm clouds brewing in Aberdeen. I really liked Marcus though, and as someone who enjoys a good drink (sometimes more than I should), the passages with him in the pub were particularly effective - to the point where I was tempted to go for a pint and a half at times!

    I read Ann Patchett's 'Commonwealth' at the end of last month, and thought that was a cert to be my book of the year. I was wrong. I can't recommend this highly enough.

  • Russell Jones

    Fantastic read, full of insight, trauma, compassion, and an excellently crafted narrative set to a very challenging backdrop. Give it a go!

  • Jason

    Forty or so pages into Iain Maloney’s "The Waves Burn Bright," I tossed the book aside- I had other priorities.

    Long after my wife had headed to bed, I picked up where I had left off, having spent the intervening hours buried in a YouTube rabbit hole reconnoitering the catastrophic events of the Piper Alpha incident. We are all guilty of some degree of ignorance when it comes to any number of topics, though I have a hard time excusing myself for having known precisely zero about history’s deadliest offshore oil platform disaster in which 167 lives were lost in a horrific inferno off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea.

    It could be said that "The Waves Burn Bright" is “about” Piper Alpha, and for those like me, who for reasons of proximity, age, or incuriosity, managed somehow to avoid knowledge of the tragic event, the book does include a brief and gripping account, described in the second person, of the disaster as it occurs. It could also be said to be about the precarious interaction of PTSD and addiction. It could be said to be about sexual identity, the baggage carried by expats— actually, migrants—or the inhumanity of the fossil fuel industry. Yet, any of these one-shot descriptions are needlessly reductive.

    Maloney’s third novel touches all of these topics, but is at its core is a compassionate and at points uncomfortable depiction of the families and communities that suffer in the wake of tragedy. As a reader from Colorado whose final year of high school was marked by the nearby Columbine massacre, "The Waves Burn Bright" at times reminded me of Wally Lamb’s "The Hour I First Believed"—about Columbine, but not really. I know next to nothing about Aberdeen, nor have I ever visited Scotland, yet the story’s intermittent stopovers in the city (spanning three decades) make clear the impact Piper Alpha had, and continues to have, on those who live there. During my YouTube expedition, I listened to a narrator describe the experience of being an eight year-old boy—Maloney’s age, at the time—awoken by what seemed to be hundreds of rescue choppers overflying his house on their way to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary; I wondered, while reading, if the author shared a similar experience.

    From a storytelling perspective, "The Waves Burn Bright" is as good as it is important. An early chapter of the book is told from the uncomplicated point of view of eight year-old Carrie; this is handled skillfully and honestly. Age-appropriate narration from a juvenile version of the central character is cute; that Maloney manages to provide Carrie with a distinct voice at ages 16, 31, and 41, while keeping the character intact and never making a show of it, is brilliant. Inspired by her geophysicist father Marcus, a Piper Alpha survivor, Carrie is a rising star in the field of volcano research. She travels the globe to survey the tremendous stresses and widening fractures beneath us; after all, they may erupt, often violently, without notice. Marcus suffers deeply, self-medicates with booze, occasionally erupts, and perseveres to the extent he is able. Maloney candidly depicts this nosedive and Marcus’s ensuing toil with evenhandedness and empathy. When introduced, each new character leaves the reader with a firm impression, and these impressions are turned on their head, one by one, when we view them through the eyes of other possibly unreliable but honest narrators.

    "The Waves Burn Bright" is well written throughout. Perhaps one of the finest pages of free-association internal monologue in recent memory takes the reader into Carrie’s panic as she sits, alone yet suffocated by strangers in the waiting area of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, awaiting word of her father’s fate. Late in the book, there comes an unexpected confrontation between two characters in a hotel lobby; this is the kind of straightforward, plot-moving interaction you always hope will occur in a story and that most authors tend to avoid. It is extraordinarily refreshing to see it handled well. Two or three snippets of dialogue appear to be out of place or out of character, though these moments are rare and in no way diminish the whole; without question, I agree with the reviewer from Scotland on Sunday—“Maloney can write.”

    This third novel from Iain Maloney clearly benefits from a tremendous amount of research. As a man who calls Aberdeen home, he naturally understood the risks of taking on such a project and anticipated potential reactions from those still living with the memory of Piper Alpha. He has certainly done his due diligence in investigating not only the facts of the event but also its attending controversies with respect and care.

    "The Waves Burn Bright" is an affecting and authentic story about the fragility and malleability of self and of family, told skillfully, that compels the reader forward with every page. It is my pleasure to recommend this book, and I heartily look forward to Maloney’s next project.

  • Steph D

    I loved this book. Let me set my own scene - I was born in Aberdeen in 1988, my mum was pregnant with me when the Piper Alpha disaster happened and my Dad was offshore in the North Sea, but on another rig. I grew up in Aberdeen and the first five years of my career were spent working in the oil and gas industry. I have recently moved to London.

    The local references (the pubs, the Uni, the memorial in Duthie Park etc) are all accurate and well described, and all brought back very recent memories for me and pulled me emotionally back home.

    I am not very good at critiquing books but this had the perfect balance between history, emotion, romance - it was beautiful and immersive. I almost forgot I was reading - I was 'there', wherever the subject was.

    A must read.

  • Suzanne

    I really enjoyed the transnational aspects of this novel. The settings range from Japan, to Aberdeen, where the catalytic oil rig disaster occurred, to New Zealand, where Carrie, the main character conducts research on volcanoes, and to Hawaii. And I found Carrie to be convincing and complicated. Maloney deals with some difficult issues, but his style is very accessible. I breezed through this book in just a few days.

  • Luci

    The ways in which human beings respond to trauma is dealt with sensitively and thoughtfully by Iain Maloney in this novel. He creates realistically flawed characters struggling to manage relationships and responses to traumatic events. The novel is beautifully written with a satisfyingly unsatisfying ending. Iain Maloney's work is getting better and better. A fantastic read.

  • Jamie Bell

    Very enjoyable if challenging book. Not what I would normally read, but enjoyed it greatly.

  • Fiona Erskine

    The story of the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster is told in two voices and shifting timelines.

    Professor Caroline Fraser, Carrie, is a professor of geology travelling to Aberdeen, the city of her birth and the place where Marcus, her estranged father, still lives and drinks.
    Marcus is a Piper Alpha survivor.

    Marcus remembers looking up at the rig after saving himself by jumping into the sea.
    ‘And there is Piper Alpha, from sea level to helideck an inferno, a vent into hell opened in the North Sea, all that rage flaring out, gas from the risers still burning, burning, more and more explosions. There are men still on it, men still in the water. Men jumping from the helideck, a hundred and eighty feet up. Hundreds of men fighting for life.’

    Growing up with bickering parents, a surgeon and a geologist locked in a career battle, Carrie doesn’t have the easiest childhood. A hint of magical realism – young Carrie’s encounter with Pele, goddess of volcanoes – turns out to be a fever dream brought on by neglectful parenting. It’s not only Marcus’s post-traumatic stress disorder that challenges his marriage. However, his refusal to seek help is the final straw. Suddenly teenage Carrie is left to care for her damaged father alone.

    The main characters are portrayed in all their messy complexity. The portraits of Ashley, Carrie’s girlfriend and Isobel, Marcus’s second wife, are more gently drawn. The new partners learn to cope with Marcus’s addiction and the fallout that has scarred his daughter. There are no easy answers or trite solutions, but the story is written with warmth and humanity.

    This is not a book about process safety or accident prevention; it doesn’t cover the causes of the 1988 Piper Alpha accident, nor the response of the regulators and industry. This is a work of fiction exploring the effect of a workplace accident on friends and families: mental health injuries that are not reflected in the blunt statistics.

    In the Shadow of Piper Alpha is a beautifully constructed, thought-provoking novel which takes us on two journeys. One is geographical – from Korea to Scotland through the fascinating geology of Japan, New Zealand, and Hawaii. The second is emotional – ripples of survivor guilt threaten a tsunami of pain until honesty, compassion, and compromise provide a breakwater of hope.

    (Extracted from my review for 'The Chemical Engineer' Magazine June 2023)

  • Tara Mc

    I was interested in this book because of the Scottish connection, being set partly in Aberdeen. The book's locations offered more than one familiar setting however, and used its geography for full impact. Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand. All places that exist somehow in our collective imagination as 'far' from Scotland, both physically and metaphorically. To return to Scotland "every way is the long way round". Through this statement on page 2, I felt instantly that the book would chime and have resonance. For all of us who have left the country, Scotland is an interesting place to be reminded of. Descriptions of Aberdeen's Old Town, the university area, and the pubs of the city were vivid. I was transported back to a time and place in my own memory.
    The story takes a real historical event, the oil-rig fire on the 'Piper Alpha' as a key event. A family drama is built around that, which crosses generations. I understood the daughter Carrie's motivations more than her flawed father, which was, I think, natural. Cultural memory is a fascinating area to explore, and I would like to see more of this kind of diaspora literature on my radar.

  • Lesley

    The Piper Alpha disaster was a terrible event. The elements of this novel directly concerned with the day were heart-stopping but the story that has been hung on this peg just didn't do it for me.

  • Iain

    Really enjoyed this - fictional novel based around family trauma following the Piper Alpha North Sea oil disaster in 1988. Does have its uplifting moments though, not all negative.

  • Russell Jones

    This book was fantastic. Emotional, poignant, satisfying. If you have any interest in this terrible disaster then I highly recommend it. Even if you don't, the story (as in the book) itself is gripping, acting as a great way to explore what happened and its effects.