Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix

A book's meaning depends on the knowledge a reader brings to it. Vincent Delecroix's Small Boat is particularly sensitive to what you already know about the particular events of 24 November 2021, in the dark seas of the French / English Channel. Tired, generic headlines concerning shivering migrants packed onto leaky boats are familiar; but I didn't know anything about the events of this specific cold night. At the start of reading Delecroix's brilliant fictionalised account of the event, my views on its central character had not been coloured by that had already formed about the figure in real life.

This central character is a unnamed coastguard (or sea controller - language and meaning of the book displays has a deliberately fluidity) is a single mother from the north coast of France. She was on duty when the 27 migrants drowned. She has arrived, unbidden, at a police station to recount her version of the night of 24 November. Regret, defiance, anger and above all confusion jostle for space in her thoughts. Her narrative creates .. sympathy? Or at least, some kind of empathy with her oh-so-human manner of wrestling with the implication of the tragedy she is part of. The moral issues wash up against her. It's clear something has gone wrong. But you are not quite sure what. What actually happened that night? Could its terrible denoument have been different? Who was to blame?

During her conversation / interrogation by the police (the woman interviewing her appearance mirrors that that of the coastguard, implying that that she is actually the coastguard's conscience) some facts emerge through the subjective retelling. As the air from the dinghy seeped away, the sinking migrants used their mobiles to call the French coastguard. Repeatedly. Desperately requesting help. The response from the coastguard ranges from: (the reader can choose) bureaucratic, perfunctory, vindictive, to deadly. It is clear that she had not done everything to save their lives. Also, there was barely any sympathy for the victims. Nevertheless, the coastguard refuses to absorb the guilt for her position. You become uncomfortable; was your earlier empathy misplaced?

Flip to the back cover. No less than civil rights advocate Gillian Slovo described this as the "gripping story of an everyday monster". The English-language introduction adds some more cold facts. The nuanced image of the coastguard is wiped - this was someone who drastically failed in their duty of care. As a result, people died, and died in horrible circumstances.

And yet ... is she to blame? A whole parade of dismal circumstances - global economic inequalities; desperation fuelled by war or poverty; from our politicians at best evasiveness, at worst cruelty; a general apathy or hatred - provide the context for the almost suicidal decision of a group of migrants to step into an horrendously ill suited boat. Our coastguard was not party to any of this. But she becomes the monster, for the actions of one dark night. Who is to blame?

And why did she do this?

This latter question is the thrust of the novel. And yet, deliberately, it cannot answer it. Precise psychological examination is undertaken. But there is no essence the author provides that provides closure. The words add, enlighten, contextualise but they remain orbiting around an inexplicable centre.

Small Boat is slim, barely surpassing a hundred pages. It focuses on one night, one person. But it achieves much. The echoes of other great books are strong, particularly Delecroix's existentialist forebears. Sartre's questioning of identity - what does it mean to act as a coastguard, or to be a coastguard - resonates throughout its pages. More striking: the echo of Camus' The Outsider. Camus' anti-hero is castigated in court not for killing an Arab, but for not showing sufficient compassion after the death of his mother. In Small Boat the questioning directed at our coastguard veers away from her failure to save the migrants (everyone knows its difficult) to her failure to offer them even (illusory) compassion during their panicked mobile phone calls from the deflating dinghy.

Finally, I could't help but thinking of another icon of French culture. Theodore Gericault's painting from 1830, The Raft of the Medusa depicts the desperate survivors of the French ship Medusa, adrift on a makeshift raft. Gericault's canvas was the climax of a terrible story: poor decisions, inexperienced sailors and government incomptence led to death of over 130 passengers and crew. With the right choices at the right time, their deaths could have been avoided. It was a huge national catastrophe.