In November of 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the English Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board.
How and why did it happen?
That’s the focus of Vincent Delecroix’s slim but powerful novel, which was translated brilliantly from the French by Helen Stevenson and short-listed for last year’s International Booker Prize.
Small Boat is a fictional account of a real-life tragedy, and it centers on a woman who was working for the French coast guard that November night. Despite receiving numerous frantic calls for help, our narrator wrongly tells the migrants they are in British waters and should call the British authorities for help. Then she tells them help is on the way, when no rescue has been launched. And finally, she utters words that are shocking in their callousness: “You will not be saved.”
Accused of failing in her duty, the woman is interviewed by investigators and refuses to be held more responsible than others for the disaster. What about the wars that drive people to risk their lives in the first place? What about the traffickers? What about the sea itself? What about all the people who tune out tragedies because they’re not directly affected?
“There is no shipwreck without spectators,” Delecroix writes. “When there are no more eyes to see than there are arms to reach out, there are still spectators, and the shore from which they are watching is never far away. … Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can’t think of a single one who could say: I wasn’t there.”
At slightly more than 100 pages, Small Boat is stunning in its expansive moral message. What at first appears to be an account of one insensitive, even inhumane, villain ends up illuminating a much broader and greater evil. A middle portion of the novel puts readers right into the sea with the desperate migrants as they call for help and fight for their lives. That is bookended by sections focused on the coast guard authority, who attempts to justify the indefensible and clear her conscience.
In an interview with Booker Prize officials, the French author and philosopher says his goal was not to express “loud and easy indignation,” but rather “to suspend all moral judgement, and, by writing an imaginary character, to simply try to penetrate a consciousness that could belong to anyone.”
Small Boat is a gripping, damning, unforgettable story, and one that inspires readers to examine their own internal monsters.
