How charmingly our text books talk about being Global citizens of one world. But we know very well that there is no equality b/w a Palestinian 'bint' & American girl child, British mom & Syrian 'Umm', Afghanistani Baba & French 'pere'. The lines of class, religion & colour are not merely marked on maps but are deeply etched in peoples heart

Based on a true event ( events) where a dinghy overfilled with immigrants attempts to cross the Channel but gets capsized. The frantic 14 calls by the victims to CROSS ( French rescue team) falls on deaf ears of on-duty female officer

An easy target she is held accountable for the death of 27 people of dingy, whom she could have easily helped but chose not to by saying that they were in English waters
When interrogated by her look alike she says her training precisely abhors her from showing emotions

"I have no problem listening to the recordings of that night and hearing my own voice, because it’s not the voice of a monster or a criminal on the tape – it’s the voice of all of us"

Divided in 3 parts, this distinctive story is told not from the POV of victims but assailant...ASSAILANTS

After half way mark I was worried that will the next half be a similar cycle of contemplation, philosophical analysis, but the shift from Part 1 to Part 2 (shows real time events faced by immigrants in the boat & trust me it chokes you) took this work notch higher

Part 3 is more of a dialogue of the protagonist with herself. How once she was her child's hero & how her ex husband is supporting her, more so coz of his own anti-migrant beliefs

"The voice of the whole of humanity reassured to hear itself saying, uttering the words: I will save you; you will not die – not actually saving, no one cares about that..But at least saying it, because to fail to say those words is to be less than human. In the end, whether they drowned or not didn’t matter; what mattered were my words"

This satirical piece shows both sides in equal light putting reader on spot. One moment the narrator is the culprit, the very next moment author puts reader in the witness stand

Translation is absolutely well done

Read it coz it's a very timely & unique read

Thank you Netgalley and Hope Road Publication for advance copy

A novel about the bystander effect and an examination of our collective desensitisation in respect to everyday horrors. For a short work quite recursive, and offering an ending which even the author himself calls something from a B movie.
There is no shipwreck without spectators

Featuring the death of 27 out of 29 migrants in their crossing of the Channel, we spend most of Small Boat not from their perspective, but rather in the mind of an unnamed officer from CROSS. Already the Wikipedia article on this agency shows the bureaucracy versus personal ethics tension at the heart of the novel: In France, the seven centres régionaux opérationnels de surveillance et de sauvetage (Regional Operating Surveillance and Rescue Centres; French acronym CROSS) coordinate maritime security and surveillance. CROSS conducts their activities under the authority of the maritime prefects in mainland France and government representatives for state action at sea in Overseas France.

While Vincent Delecroix his writing is good, I did expect more, and even for just over 120 pages, the book at times felt very repetitive. Maybe this is reflection that we can't progress and seem to be stuck in a loop of looking away, but I found Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia a more effective meditation on the same topic of how we as society look away from ethical questions, and just outsource them to invisible fringes of society. The main character makes a link with homelessness and despair being all around us, yet we can close ourselves off from this immediate suffering, let alone from more distant events that appear at times to be no more than accounting or newspaper headlines.

Section II, the briefest of the 3 parts the book is divided into, hammers home how people are literally dying every single day for the dream of working in a grocery store, but in a safe country.
The cargo ships passing by to deliver our luxuries makes this section poignant and I was reminded of a quote which I associate with one of the books of R.F. Kuang or N.K. Jemisin on how every amenity and luxury in a capital is predicated upon the exploitation and misery at the edges of the empire, in this case the Western world exploiting labour of undocumented migrants for the most menial jobs.

The last section, featuring Léa, the young daughter of the narrator and Eric, her ex with Front National ideologies and finally Julien, a co-worker with philosophical, and in particular cynical, tendencies, is unfortunately much less impactful in my view.
An important topic, and worthy in how it serves as an J'Accuse...! in respect to our complacency and acceptance of tragedies, as long as they don't hit people like us.

Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize

It is translated from the French “Naufrage” (2023) by Helen Stevenson – the change in title from the much more neutral “Shipwreck” I think deliberate to give the book more political resonance in England and note that the journey from French to English is here deeply symbolic of the novel which centres on the death on 24th November 2021 of 27 migrants attempting to cross in an inflatable motorised dinghy from France (near Dunkirk) to England.

When they realised they were in trouble the passengers repeatedly contacted CROSS (the French Regional Monitoring and Rescue Centre at Cap Gris-Nez), but were told they were in English waters even at the same time the same CROSS radio operator confused the English border forces, a French rescue boat and a nearby French trawler none of who ultimately came to the rescue – and voice recordings of that operator caught her saying off microphone “It wasn’t me that told you to leave”.

And it is in the fictionalised/imagined inner voice of that narrator that the main part of this short novella is set – as she, under suspension, has agreed to be questioned by the police (a policewoman she sees as an almost mirror likeness).

It is a questioning she pushes back on – told she should have shown more feelings for migrants she pushes back strongly that her professional training is precisely not to allow emotions to bear. Further though she argues, mainly to herself, that while it might sound callous, she was indeed right to say that the origination of the deaths of the migrants was not in her own potential negligence on that night, but started not just with their decision to make the crossing, but in the geo-political situation which causes them to migrate and also to risk the dangerous crossing to England.

Her own situation we realise is difficult – a single parent having felt forced to leave her young daughter’s father, and the bodies of the migrants do seem to haunt her imaginings – but there is little empathy for her from the policewoman who seems shocked at her lack of both emotion and admission of culpability and apparent attempts to deflect things into a wider philosophical discussion. And I think – and can see from many of the Goodreads reviews – of the original French that many readers may react the same (I have also seen French mainstream media reviews which lament the author’s insistence on giving a voice to what is in effect a perpetrator rather than in their views appropriately majoring on the stories of the victims).

But I think this is to miss the point of the novel. The author – also a philosopher - has said of his use of fiction here “Mon but, c’était d'introduire du trouble dans le jugement, d'apporter des hypothèses fictionnelles qui permettent de suspendre le jugement moral immédiat qu’on peut avoir sur ces situations-là. Ce qui m'a frappé, c'est la coïncidence topographique entre la position du sage et celle du criminel : les deux sont à distance, sur le rivage." which in my own attempt at a non-literal translation would be: “My goal was to make judgment difficult, to use a a fictional approach so as to allow us to suspend the knee-jerk moral judgement we make in such situations. It struck me that the person making those judgements and the people traffickers are in the same situation, both observing at a distance from the shore.”

A second section does indeed capture the voice of one of the passengers on the boat – the passenger who made in total 14 phone calls to the CROSS radio operator – and tells a stark story of the boat’s engine failure, followed by it shipping water, then sinking and his own lengthy drowning.

The third part of the passage returns to the radio operator – going for a beachside jog: we learn of her feelings about the fearful and implacable power of the sea; her discussions with her young daughter about the migrants and their fate – and with her ex-husband (who has strong anti-immigration views); we wonder if the first Section was in fact entirely an internal interrogation and the policewoman a literal mirror image; we see her raging at the sea as well as thinking she is being approached by the two surviving migrants and we also see her returning to her themes of wider culpability as the book reaches its philosophical conclusion.

Overall I found this a powerful book – one which takes a deliberately unusual and uncomfortable approach by using the voice of a potential amoral and definitely philosophising bureaucrat to pose difficult questions, rather than the more conventional approach of centring the victim’s voices – but which as a result was for me more thought provoking and confrontational.

Small Boat is like a bucket of cold water, slowly pouring over you as you question society's moral code. The stream-of-consciousness writing style draws us into the introspective thoughts of the narrator - the woman who took the SOS calls - a perspective many will find reprehensible.

As I read, I was reminded of society’s apathy toward crises, the kind we witness on the news: human trafficking, sinking boats, drowning migrants, and wars that drive people to desperate solutions.

The central question for the narrator is clear: Why didn’t you send help?
Yet, no answer is presented, instead, this is the kind of novel that urges readers to consider multiple perspectives and form their own reflections on the issue at hand.

The first part introduces the crisis, provoking frustration and distress.
The second part stirs empathy, weighing heavily on the heart.
The third part offers a final perspective, a loose end that ensures the questions continue to linger in the reader’s mind.

A small page count, but a profound impact.

I have read a few accounts of small boat crossings and was interested to read this one because of the different viewpoints, however I found the book incredibly difficult to follow. Aside from the obvious, tragic event at the centre of the story, I am not entirely sure I know what happened. The haphazard use of punctuation didn’t help. Having said that, I strongly feel that any book that brings attention to this subject and highlights the absolute desperation of people forced to make this journey, is worth persevering with and deserves all the promotion it can get.

3.5*
I was aware of the true events that occurred which inspired 'Small Boat' but didn't know that much about it so was excited to find out more as I usually like books based on true storied. I enjoyed the contents and how it was split up into different parts and switched between the two POVs. However, I did find the writing style difficult to follow at times especially when they were being interviewed as there were no speech marks and I kept having to re-read parts to make sure I understood what was going on and not miss anything when different people were talking. Overall I did enjoy it and found it to be a moving read and I would have rated it higher if the style flowed better and I didn't have to stop and start. I would recommend this book and will look out for more from the author in the future.

Emotional and based on unfortunate true events, this book was difficult to read, as something of this calibre should be. I did find the story interesting and very important but I struggled with the narration and writing style. It was hard to fully invest in this book, I was on the edge of being pulled in but never quite felt connected. But still, an important story.