Suzanne Heywood - Wavewalker: Breaking Free

In 1975, when Suzanne Heywood was six, her parents announced that they were going to follow in the path of Captain Cook's third voyage and travel around the world by sailing boat. To Suzanne and her younger brother this was a bolt from the blue. It would be, her father said, a three year trip. The youngsters thought it was a tremendous adventure. The idea of a young family making such an epic journey captured the minds of many. Journalists and camera crews followed preparations, and the ship, Wavewalker, was sent off by an appropriately large group of the great and the good, and many curious onlookers.

The youngsters found it thrilling, but quickly things began to be a lot more confused. In the eyes of Suzanne, her father was a brilliant explorer, a worthy person to follow Captain Cook. But problems began to develop. Inevitably, the trips was not as easy as expected. Tensions developed among those on board, and as days, became weeks and then months, things were not quite so clear.

Wavewalker is a fascinating book, because it uses the medium of Heywood's memoires to explore something far beyond the voyage itself. The three years, became four, then five. Eventually Wavewalker and Heywood's family spent a decade sailing 47,000 miles. The reminiscences are often what you might expect from such a voyage. Suzanne remembers whales, adventure and exotic ports. But when, in the Indian ocean in the midst of an enormous storm, a giant wave smashed into Wavewalker and badly injured Suzanne, we begin to see the real tensions in the project.

For this book is not really about Wavewalker's voyage. It is really about how the obsessions of adults impact upon their children. Suzanne's father could not see beyond the voyage. Her mother, despite her professed hatred of sailing, could not break from him. Suzanne has recreated the experiences from her own diaries, recollections and interviews with the crew that come and go. She also has her father's logbooks and own writings, that paint a different picture - one of family unity and enjoyment. But, Suzanne increasingly, and desperately, wants to return home, but her parents won't allow anything to get in the way of their dreams. They see the voyage as a the best education young children could have. The intergenerational tensions become simmering hatred.  

The readers follow Suzanne as she becomes forced increasingly to rely on her own devices. Self reliant and wary of forming friendships because these are only ever temporary - it is not hard to see that Suzanne is actually depressed, and suffering enormously. She is desperate to learn, yet her parents see education as a irrelevant to the voyage. Her mother, in particular, blocks Suzanne - playing loud music while the girl studies, mocking her and only supporting her father's goals. 

This leads to some shocking moments. When Suzanne is having emergency surgery on a remote island for injuries sustained in the storm, her mother can barely be with her. Eventually, as a teenager, Suzanne is left in charge of her brother, while her parents voyage onward. Later we learn that her mother has told her father, that either Suzanne leaves the ship or she does. Suzanne is left to fend for herself, in a situation that frankly is shocking. Eventually she phones Childline, the counsellor telling her "None of this is your fault... You’re coping with far more than is fair."

What is shocking about Suzanne's account is her parent's seeming lack on interest in their children's own needs. They seemed to see them as extensions of their own selves - sharing interests, beliefs and so on. Suzanne is expected to take on the traditional female roles of kitchen work, while her brother works on deck. When she asks questions about religion, beginning to develop her own ideas about the world, her father mocks her as the "token Christian" rather than engaging with her and encouraging her to think. 

Suzanne shines through however as a independent, brave and clever girl. As she grows older on the endless voyage, she fights for space to learn and educate. In the most deplorable of circumstances she passes exams via correspondence courses, having to beg her parents to make sure she gets to the exams. While she never gets the dress she craves - her parents essentially take her money - she does eventually break free and get to university.

This book is very unlike those I would normally read, and this review is not easy to write. I got it after reading Suzanne Heywood's article in the Guardian, a selection of extracts, because the book spoke to me about relationships and family. While I cannot claim to have shared her experiences, I felt that Suzanne spoke to me about some of what I have experienced in my own life. Reading Wavewalker was then a deeply moving personal experience as well as a sad insight into another's life. 

When her family learn that Suzanne is writing this book, they react with shock and anger. It is clear that the tensions and fissures within the family that were created in the 1970s and 1980s are never resolved, because her parents can never admit their failure. Wavewalker then, is a on one level a tragic tail of parental failure. But on the other it is a tremendous story of a young woman who refused to give up on her dream, and overcame incredible odds to do that. My heart was with her on every page, though my mind was often elsewhere.