The early years of the twentieth century hold an irresistible draw for the modern imagination. The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan takes us back to 1914, the world poised on the precipice of the modern age, with a plot and characters that are of the pre-modern era. A ship is stricken and, in a rescue bid, lifeboats are hurriedly deployed. At the last minute, Grace Winter manages to secure a berth on one. She finds herself adrift with thirty-nine fellow passengers. Rumours of distress signals stoke hope of potential rescue. But this is a technological dark age; they are at the mercy of the sea and each other.
It is a rollicking scenario, and one teased apart with aplomb. The boat is too small to cope with them all. Any hope of recovery depends on lightening the load. But who stays and who dies? It is all very Darwinian. Or perhaps Freudian would be more apposite (Rogan flags up the man himself on page 51). The power dynamics have a faintly psychoanalytic twist: authority is initially outsourced to a piratical seaman from the ship called Mr Hardie, though his devilish acts quickly sour many of the passengers against him. Plots of his overthrow begin to stew. The idea of civilization masking id-like interiors soon permeates every page.
Though certain that they will ‘preserve civility’ at the start, manners erode as the story unfolds. Various characters die or commit suicide. The lifeboat scenes gradually create a picture of the ‘bare bones of our natures’, culminating in a blackly comic episode when lots are drawn among the men in an effort to further reduce the human cargo. Two unlucky ones take the plunge. With the veneer of civilization dispatched it is not long before ‘the father’, that other Freudian bugbear, is similarly snuffed. Led on by the enigmatic duo of Mrs Grant and Hannah, Grace helps to kill the tyrannical (and potentially evil?) Mr Hardie. The realization that we are all ‘predators’ is complete.
All of that might suggest pseudo-philosophy and joylessness, but Rogan steers clear of both. The lifeboat scenes are framed at the start and finish by a court case, with the rescued Grace, Mrs Grant and Hannah arraigned for the murder of Mr Hardie. A full account of the trial occupies the last quarter of the book and the sea-bound scenes are invested with gossipy clues. Romance isn’t neglected either. Grace remembers her husband, Henry, and tales of their courtship make for pleasing asides from the red-in-tooth-and-claw nature of the boat.
It is a strangely wonderful book, like Moby-Dick retold by Dorothy L. Sayers. Pleasing period details abound: talk of ‘women’s suffrage’, memories of the Titanic, murmurs about the recently assassinated Archduke, as well as a mysterious subplot based on a wheeze to steal treasure from the ship. Rogan gives Grace a voice both lucid and complex, an innocent abroad who nevertheless adapts to the necessities of survival with speed. The uneventful nature of a solitary lifeboat might become dull in clumsier hands, but Rogan blends the elemental and the familiar to great effect. For a debut novel, it rarely stumbles and frequently soars.
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