One Boat
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- €8.49
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly – her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman reflects on her life after the deaths of her parents in the introspective latest from Buckley (Tell). Corporate lawyer Teresa travels from her home in England to a Greek town after her father dies. Nine years earlier, in the wake of her mother's death, she went to the same place. In her journal, Teresa recounts the earlier trip and describes reencounters with the same inhabitants. Among them are Niko, the younger diving instructor she had a fling with the first time around, who's now married ("Representations of the gymnastics would be ridiculous; of the sensations, impossible," she writes about the sex they had during her earlier visit). She also befriended Petros, a surly mechanic who has since published a book of poems, which the other locals ridicule ("He is good with cars. That is what he should do," one of them remarks). Teresa, however, sees an allure in the work's simplicity ("The poem was like a tuning fork"). The series of reunions begin to offer Teresa a sense of closure, not only for her losses but for the lingering impact of the earlier visit on her life. The fluid storytelling and the subtlety of Teresa's observations leave an understated but lasting impression. There's much to treasure in this quiet novel.
