The Life Boat

Sometimes a novel comes into your life and makes it dangerous. The Life Boat is one of those. I was reading this one when stopped at the traffic lights and when stirring something boiling on the stove with one hand and reading this book with the other. I have always admired writers who have set their story in a limited environment and yet manage to sustain engagement for the entire book. This is not one of those novels ranging across three continents with a cast of characters. The story is set in a boat. The novel opens with a court scene, where the protagonist, Grace, is waiting for a verdict. She may have to face the consequences of her actions out at sea.

When an explosion on board the ship she is sailing on forces Grace onto an already overcrowded lifeboat, the journey is set to be fraught with challenges. The difficulties faced by the boat’s occupants are not just being adrift in inclement weather. Being forced to share a small space with strangers brings tensions to the fore. It doesn’t take long before allegiances are quickly established and resentment surfaces. Much like Lord of the Flies, a hierarchy is needed. There are leaders and followers, traitors and loyalists, those who think of others and those who think only of their own survival.

Rogan emotionally distances Grace from readers. Because of this, Grace is an unreliable narrator. We are never quite sure of her motives, and there is always doubt in the reader’s mind about whether she is telling the truth. Only a few characters in the boat are fully fleshed out. Others are referred to by their occupations or another way of identification. This works well here because firstly, it would be impossible for the reader to get to know every character in the boat and secondly, it strengthens the notion that in a catastrophic situation certain personality types will think and act in the interests of their own survival. Therefore, to Grace, a lot of the others in the boat are not important to her.

Just how Grace manages to be let onto the boat when it is full is never fully explained, but it is implied that perhaps Henry, a man of wealth and privilege, and Grace’s fiance, bribes whoever is in charge. Grace develops survivor instincts long before the accident happens. At the time Grace met Henry, he was engaged to another woman, but Grace doesn’t let that stand in her way. Her pragmatism extends to glossing over how she became engaged to Henry, leaving out any hint of what is on her conscience. ‘That Henry was already engaged seemed only the mildest of impediments. I even viewed it as a good thing, for how would he have come to my notice without the write-up for his engagement party in the Times?’  

This is woman and women against nature. And also, woman and women against human nature. The actions of Grace leave the reader wondering what we would do if we were put in her situation. What makes a survivor? What qualities or experiences makes a person give in and not fight for their life? Is this natural selection at play? The survival of the fittest? The novel forces us to examine the choices we would make under the circumstances. And some of those choices may not be the ones we’d think we’d make, had our lives been not all at sea.