How to Build a Boat
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3.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize • Shortlisted for the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year • One of the Globe and Mail's "Sixty-Two Books to Read This Fall" • One of the Globe 100's Best Books of 2023 • A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 • A NYPL Book of the Day
Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of certain objects, books with dust jackets, rivers, cats, and Edgar Allan Poe. At age thirteen, there are two things he wants most in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother, Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind, these things are intimately linked, and at his new school, despite the daily barrage of bullies and cathedral bells, he meets two teachers who might be able to help him, though each struggles against inertias of their own.
How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy’s irrepressible dream finds expression through a community propelled by love out of grief. Lyrical and compassionate, it's a novel about the courage of conviction and the power of the imagination to transform—and how sometimes the best way to break free of old walls is to build something beautiful within them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irish novelist and poet Feeney (As You Were) delivers the touching story of a neurodivergent boy and the community that comes to his aid. In Galway, 13-year-old Jamie O'Neill dreams of building a perpetual motion machine that, in his mind, will connect him to his late mother, who died giving birth to him. Jamie knows the exact number of steps from home to his new school, where he faces bullies, beatings, and a school president, Father Faulks, who is hostile to students with special needs. Fortunately, he finds a sympathetic teacher in Tess Mahon, who is wilting under the strain of an unhappy marriage. Tess, in turn, introduces Jamie to the new woodwork teacher, Tadhg Foley, who suggests working with the boy to build a currach, a kind of boat. Pretty soon, other boys at the school join in the project, giving the usually isolated Jamie a much-needed sense of community. Only Father Faulks stands in the way of a smooth launch for the currach. The author has a beautiful, crystal-clear prose style that penetrates to the emotional core of her three main characters, whose hurts and desires are achingly rendered on the way to a quietly triumphant ending. Readers will not soon forget Jamie and his quest to make sense of a confusing world.
