One Boat is a 2025 novel by British author Jonathan Buckley published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. The novel follows Teresa who visits an unnamed Greek coastal town after the death of her father. Nine years earlier she visited the same town after the death of her mother. The narrative shifts between both trips. Teresa, who is an aspiring author, also documents her travels and dreams in writing. The novel shares these journal entries within the narrative, with Teresa's thoughts and entries separated from the events of the novel using italics.
The novel was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. The judges stated that the novel explored themes of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility with nuance.[2]
Narrative
Teresa travels to an unnamed town on the Greek coast on holiday after her father had just died. Nine years earlier, she was in the same town and same hotel room on holiday after the death of her mother. During the first holiday, she is reading Homer's The Odyssey and during the second holiday she is reading The Iliad. Teresa is also documenting her dreams and her experiences in a journal, hoping to one day develop the material into a novel.
On both the first and second trips she interacts with some of the townspeople. She meets Xanthe, a waitress in the café in the town square. During her first trip, she has an affair with her diving instructor Niko, and she meets him again in the second holiday, with Niko now being married. She meets Petros, the local mechanic and also amateur poet, whose rudimentary, child-like poetry is ridiculed by the locals. She also meets John, a man in anguish, struggling with the violent death of his nephew and the suicide of his sister.
Reception
Reviewers for both The Stanford Daily and The Sunday Times stated that the non-linear narrative, which jumps back and forth (sometimes within chapters or even paragraphs) between both holidays, Teresa's notes from both trips, and her retrospective look back on both trips from the present day, is difficult to follow.[3][4] In a mostly negative review, James Riding of The Sunday Times described the novel as an "enigmatic tale of guilt and grief on the Greek coast that never fully coheres". Riding also said the depictions of some of the locals "veer close to stereotypes", Riding said the most fascinating characterization was that of the character John.[3] The Times Literary Supplement was positive, describing the novel as "strange, sly and self-assured" and concluding "There is a great deal of freight on board One Boat, but it packs so neatly into 168 pages that it never feels overburdened."[5]
↑ Wilson, Frances (21 March 2025). "How much feeling?". Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 3 September 2025.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
