Daisy Johnson’s latest novel, *Long Wave*, centers around a mysterious island that exerts a powerful, enigmatic pull on its characters, particularly two women whose lives are shaped by trauma and longing. The story follows teenager Ruth, who seeks escape from her controlling mother, and Ori, an abandoned woman grappling with her newborn child and unresolved questions about her own origins. The island serves as a haunting focal point, embodying both wonder and menace as it draws Ruth, Ori, and other characters into its orbit.

Johnson’s narrative style in *Long Wave* balances a dreamlike, evocative quality with moments of obscurity, echoing the tone of her Booker-shortlisted debut, *Everything Under* (2018). The novel alternates between scenes of nostalgic childhood innocence—such as Ruth and a neighbor riding bikes to a river—and a pervasive, often inexplicable melancholy that permeates the island’s atmosphere. Johnson describes this feeling through Ruth’s eyes as “a secret ache of somewhere else,” a sensation that is difficult to articulate yet deeply affecting.

*Long Wave* revisits themes explored in Johnson’s prior work, including the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, the enduring impact of familial trauma, and the idea that environmental landscapes, especially wetlands, can retain the psychic scars of those who inhabit them. While Johnson’s most recent publication, *The Hotel* (2025), was a collection of horror stories involving supernatural elements, *Long Wave* eschews overt ghosts in favor of spectral memories, missing family members, and the blurred line between recollection and hallucination.

The narrative intricately weaves together the lives of Ruth and Ori through shifting perspectives and timelines. Ruth’s teenage experience includes a traumatic pregnancy and river birth, with Johnson vividly describing how the cold water “cuts a line across the top of her thighs.” Decades later, Ori undergoes a similarly harrowing childbirth and enters the same river, a moment described with parallel imagery. This temporal folding deepens the connection between the characters while underscoring the novel’s exploration of memory and trauma’s distortion of perception.

Johnson provides a detailed and empathetic portrayal of Ori’s postpartum depression, capturing the exhaustion and emotional void that accompany her condition. Ori confides in a health visitor about her overwhelming emptiness and fear of loss, revealing the novel’s focus on the internal struggles that often remain invisible from the outside.

While there is a literal lighthouse on the island that conjures literary echoes of Virginia Woolf’s engagement with watery landscapes and maternal loss, Johnson’s stylistic influences appear more aligned with contemporary authors like Sarah Moss and Max Porter, whose works similarly explore psychological turmoil against pastoral backdrops. *Long Wave* is characterized by its eerie atmosphere and delicate fusion of sorrow and mysticism. Though its narrative opacity may challenge some readers, this deliberate elusiveness contributes to the novel’s haunting and compelling impact.