The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood

My enormous thanks to Frankie Banks at Orion for sending me a copy of The Wakes by Diane Yarwood in return for an honest review.

The Wakes is already available in other formats but will be published by Orion imprint Phoenix in paperback on 25th April 2024 and is available for purchase through the links here.

The Wakes

It’s winter in Sydney and the lives of two strangers have fallen apart. Newly separated and in need of a distraction, Clare agrees to help her neighbour Louisa with a funeral catering business that has bitten off more than it can chew. Meanwhile, emergency doctor Chris has witnessed too many deaths but still feels compelled to attend the occasional wake.

When Clare and Chris meet, the good in their lives is slowly illuminated. After all, the thing about death is that it makes life matter.

Funny, moving, wise and hopeful, The Wakes is an irresistible debut novel about old friends, lost love, good food and new beginnings.

My Review of The Wakes

Clare is helping her neighbour cater for wakes!

The Wakes is a gorgeously nuanced book that is balanced between humour and sadness, life and death, love and loss. I adored it.

The Wakes is deceptively simple. A couple of neighbours, Clare and Louisa become friends as they cater for a series of funeral wakes and much of the action is relatively prosaic and understated. However, this is the greatest success of Dianne Yarwood’s story. Through the small aspects of life, the quick turns of fate or accident, she presents a relatable, heart-rending narrative that makes the reader feel seen. The Wakes is the potential story of all our lives.

Dianne Yarwood places the reader right next to the characters – Clare and Chris in particular – feeling their emotions with them so that the story has an almost visceral effect. She illustrates how the minutiae of life are actually life itself. There’s a love story here, but one which is slow-burning and all the more affecting as a result. There’s humour as the characters often surprise themselves just as much as the reader. There’s a portrait of society that resonates with grief, hope, jealousies and and aspiration. It’s the themes and human understanding rather than the action that makes The Wakes so compelling. The Wakes illustrates the myriad ways we torture ourselves with ‘what ifs?’, so often comparing ourselves with others and finding ourselves lacking. In addition, I’d defy anyone reading The Wakes not to become ravenous. The descriptions of food are sublime!

Whilst The Wakes is beautifully written with a wonderful range of sentence structure, it is in the simplest of sentences that Diane Yarwood packs the most impact and emotion. Every time, she stops the reader in their tracks as they think that the author has articulated to perfection their own inner feelings – ones they didn’t know they had, never mind trying to express them. This truly is magnificent writing.

The characters are perfectly drawn. Even the least likeable, like Paul, is imbued with such pathos that it is impossible not to find compassion and understanding in your heart for them. I loved the fact that Beth is the catalyst for so much of the dynamic between characters, especially Chris, Paul and Dan and yet she is barely physically present in the narrative.

It’s quite hard to review The Wakes, because it is akin to a deep, calm lake. It appears simple, but beneath its perfect surface far more is happening than might at first appear. I thought it was outstanding.

About Diane Yarwood

Dianne Yarwood worked in accounting and corporate advisory in London and Sydney. She also nurtured a love for cooking and catering. At the age of forty, with three young children, she became very ill and her life was saved by an emergency doctor. This brush with mortality gave her the courage to do what she’s always wanted to do – write. Dianne lives in Sydney with her husband. The Wakes is her first novel.