Book Review: ONE BOAT by Jonathan Buckley

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The Question of Questions wasn't 'Why are the stars in the sky?' but rather 'Why is anything anywhere?'"

I dove into the 3rd Booker Longlister's ocean of melodic phrases, swam amidst its memorable characters and emerged excited for the possibilities of language, especially its ability to preserve the fleeting flash that is one human life.

In ONE BOAT by Jonathan Buckley, our heroine (a lawyer with literary ambitions) is a divorced English woman who revisits a Greek provincial town after 9 years. The first time she was there, she met some of the townsfolk, healing a broken heart through the pursuit of human connection. The second time, she seeks a similar salvation through conversing with these same people: an old lover, a poet/philosopher, and the former waitress-turned-owner of the local tavern.

The story is simple enough, and yet there is a great deal unsaid, a lot of the story shimmering beneath the surface. What is the real reason behind the mysterious injury of the town poet? Did the random stranger confessing to planning murder actually carry out his revenge?

And through it all, thoughts of the female lead's dead parents arise. How she longs to share her experiences with her beloved mom and less beloved, yet dearly missed dad. How absence is presence, the blessing of memory. And how transitory a human life is, brilliant in its brevity until we all go "into the great indifference."

The novel becomes very meta towards the end, as all throughout the writer reinterprets her experience as she records her thoughts in her diary, later submitted for publication. I smiled as the editor (himself a Booker Longlister, who rewrote his book five times) suggested ways by which our heroine might try "increasing the 'narrative torque.'" But she lets the seemingly ordinary holiday remain as is, without embellishment. Because even in its most banal, a life truly lived (talking to people, looking at the sunrise, and being in the moment) is already an unearned abundance.

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