The Lifeboat

The Lifeboat
By Charlotte Rogan (274 pages)
Published by Little, Brown
Bookish rating: 4

I love survivor stories, fiction or nonfiction. Remember the Andes plane crash survivors in Alive? Riveting.

In The Lifeboat, Rogan brilliantly merges high drama and psychological and moral complexity with spectacular writing. Usually, you get one or the other with survivor stories. Rogan gives us both.

Set in 1914, an explosion sinks a Titanic-esque ship. Grace, our narrator, makes it onto an over-filled lifeboat. Some will have to die, especially as hope of rescue fades.

Oh, yes. HIGH DRAMA. The story is utterly absorbing, pushing the reader, like all survivor stories do, to wonder, What would I do?

The novel opens with Grace being prosecuted for murder, so it's no secret that not everybody lives. My only quibble with the story is that trial-related scenes can't hold up to the immediate drama of the lifeboat scenes. I can't think of a way to avoid this except to shove the trial to the end of the book instead of sprinkling scenes throughout, but of course doing so would've undermined Rogan's exploration of memory, psychology, and morality.

On a note unrelated to the actual story, my Charlotte spotted her name on the cover of this book. So, I flipped to the inside flap of the back cover and showed her the author's photo, where her name appeared again. "When I grow up, I want to be like that Charlotte," she said.

"You want to go to Princeton and write books?" I asked.

"Yep!" she said, blissfully unaware of what either requires. Of course, seeing the name "Charlotte" on the cover in a lovely serif type bizarrely pleased me. My, Charlotte has a beautiful, beautiful name.