talk about hard-hitting

Book Review: Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix 

…I picked up a couple of short novels through a combination of curiosity and convenience on my first trip into the mighty Naestved Bibliotek. I don’t use mighty errantly; this place is quite impressive. A soft play area for kids, as well as an extensive vinyl record collection for borrowing LPs. It also just feels nice and comfortable, not the same stuffiness you often find in libraries elsewhere. From a completely biased, monolingual foreigner perspective, the only area that was lacking (lacking is probably the wrong term because it suggests that this detraction is a fault on them) was the English section. I mean, when you shirk those imperial thoughts, why on earth would a Danish library have an extensive collection of books in English? Who, even if capable of speaking multiple languages, would choose to read in their second or third language for pleasure? Maybe there are some about or that is pretty common, but the world and experience of a multilingual individual is so far from my sphere of understanding that it’s not worth dwelling on. My options were, in that case, somewhat limited. In front of me stood a mere three shelves, reasonably dense, but three, nonetheless. At a glance, the offerings were not overly inspiring. A good deal of your typical fiction, detective thrillers, and – even too soppy and cliché for me – romance novels. It took several more passes and countless Goodreads searches to siphon off two valid suitors. One being Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix and the other, Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior. Both are critically acclaimed international authors and Booker Prize nominees. They must be good, right? The reviews said so and heralded both deep, inspiring, and powerful narratives. And to be honest, I’d been hunched over looking at books for too long, even for my standards, so I set them aside. But would I have chosen them outside of the constraints placed upon me in the Naestved Library? Probably not. Neither are genres or styles that I typically gravitate towards, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone out of my way and bought these books as new. Yet, there I was taking them both out to invest my time and effort into. I think that’s the beauty and, honestly, the importance of going to the library and including library books in your reading rotation. Look, I certainly enjoy owning physical copies of books and feel as though there’s a wonderful aspect of tying memories and experiences to tangible books on your bookshelf (this blog is evidence of that) but the monetary exchange places a barrier – albeit only a small one at times – between your typical cannon and branching out and reading books you wouldn’t typically indulge in. If you don’t like a library book, there’s no harm or consequence, no buyer’s remorse and annoyance, you simply return it. However, through a purchase, you feel slightly more obligated to really like an author/book/genre – or at least think you will – to pick it up and invest money into it. By creating these fences around your reading and not venturing into different literary worlds, you are placing a hard cap upon your own potential for not only enjoyment but growth, learning, and empathy. These two books were perfect examples of this for me. Not books I would have spent money on, but…God, am I glad I read them. They both undoubtedly challenged and developed my views on new as well as difficult topics.

Starting with Small Boat….

 

Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat is as impactful a short story as I have ever read. The depth Delecroix reaches in a mere 122 pages is incredible. The book is centered on real-life events that occurred in November 2021 when a French Marine rescue operator took a call from a sinking migrant boat in the British Channel. She wrongly told the callers they were in British waters and therefore needed the attention of British authorities. By the time the British arrived, all but two of the thirty that embarked on the perilous journey survived. 27 migrants lost their lives attempting this crossing from Calais beach, and the actions of that emergency call operator were duly investigated as a result.

Delecroix presents to us a fictional depiction of this now infamous call operators’ life and psyche in the aftermath of the event. We follow the call operator as she navigates a police inquiry in addition to her attempts at dealing with the results of her actions and thoughts. We are shown the depths of her internal dialogue as she seemingly attempts to shirk all responsibility for the events of that fateful night. The narrator begins as offensively amoral and monster-like in her description of events and justifications for actions, or inaction in this case. This opening sentiment is best seen in the following passage of internal dialogue:

“I didn’t ask you to leave, I said. It was your idea, and if you didn’t want to get your feet wet, love, you shouldn’t have embarked. I didn’t push you into the water, I didn’t fetch you from your village or field or ruin of a suburb and put you in your wretched leaky boat, and now the water’s up to your ankles, I get it that you’re frightened, and you want me to save you and you’re impatient. You’re counting on me. But I didn’t ask you for any of that. So you’ll just have to grin and bear it and let me get on with my job. And apparently these thoughts were so strong that I actually spoke them out loud, the first bit, at least, certainly if the recordings are to be believed and there’s no reason not to believe them. I accept that.”

The disturbing lack of accountability displayed in this passage, along with much of the first section of the book, is stirring to say the least. You read it, wondering how someone could be so cold and callous in the face of real suffering. The call operator spends much of the time attempting to shift blame to a whole host of other actors. From the migrants themselves to government policy, the narrator squirms and refuses to see herself as the sole guilty party. The subsequent sections of the novella play on this sentiment beautifully, with the second portion opposing the morally detached observer with a fictionalized account of the migrant’s journey. This part walks you through the horror and trauma those thirty migrants must have experienced in the freezing British Channel. This contrast only adds to the initial disgust at the narrator; her unfeeling demeanor is accentuated by the human tragedy of the migrants.

The final section of the novella is unequivocally the most powerful. Here, Delecroix has the narrator hold a mirror up to you, the reader. You are suddenly dragged into the depths of moral debate, with your own ethics and actions being questioned. You realize the narrator is speaking directly to you, the armchair activist, and exposing your loud outrage, yet quiet action in response to human tragedy. A key component of the story, both in real life and in Delecroix’s fictionalized version, is the public uproar at a single phrase said by the call operator during the event. Audio recordings picked up the operator saying “you will not be saved” just at the end of one of the many calls taken from the migrants that night (it is unclear whether the migrant in the boat making the call heard this). The final part of the book tackles this type of public and overt outrage directly. The narrator highlights how the words themselves had no direct impact upon the speed at which water flooded the dinghy, the migrants’ chances of survival, nor the actions of themself as an emergency rescue coordinator. Yet, it was these words alone that sparked a torrent of indignation from the media and the public.

It was this short phrase, not the loss of migrant life, which inflamed all those on their “sofas” pointing fingers, for they wanted her to say everything will be okay, they will be saved, no matter the reality or the result. They wanted to hear her say such words so they could believe that they would have done better in her position. They wanted to be comforted by the belief that their morality is above that of this operator. They want to be able to say to their friends or colleagues how they would never have said something like that, how they would have done everything in their power. They want to show everyone how much they care for these migrants who risk their lives for a chance at a better life. They want to be able to post a sad report on social media to signal just how much they care, just how much they are “doing”. They don’t truly care whether the migrants drowned or were saved. The outrage is at the words which strike deep into the spectator’s conscience because they know the words stand for them, they know they won’t save them.

The fixation upon the words spoken by the operator highlights the knee-jerk reaction to everything surrounding the “migrant crisis” along with many other stories of human tragedy, the world over. Public outrage and moral righteousness serve little to no purpose in saving lives. That’s one of many areas that Delecroix tackles brilliantly in this short novel. The irony is that this call operator had probably saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives up until that point, yet, because of a few choice words (which in reality had no impact upon the outcome), she is seen as a monster who let 30 people drown. Mainly by the many who sit and watch every day, pretending they’re doing something.

Delecroix’s Small Boat forces you to flinch, first at the disgust of the narrator’s inhumanity, then at yourself and your own inaction and morality. A book which challenges you, makes you writhe under scrutiny, as well as discover a new sense of empathy. All in 122 pages. A deeply complex and challenging book, which I hope I did justice to in my response. An amazing read. Don’t just pick it up if you come across it in a library. Seek this one out. 

4/5