Book of the Week: ONE BOAT by Jonathan Buckley
Buckley perfectly captures the language we use for thinking, for overthinking, and for avoiding thinking in this precise, enjoyable novel about attempting to come to terms with memory, family, personal agency, guilt and loss while in a context that both denies the past and renders it inescapable.
“Following the death of her father, Teresa returns to the small coastal town in Greece she first visited when her mother died nearly a decade before. From this scenario, tacking between the events of the second trip and memories of the first, Buckley creates a novel of quiet brilliance and sly humour, packed with mystery and indeterminacy. The way in which the book interleaves Teresa’s relationship to her mother, her involvement in an amateur murder investigation, and an account of a love affair, raises questions about grief, obsession, personhood and human connectivity we found to be as stimulating as they are complex.” —2025 Booker Prize judges’ citation