Small Boat, Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson
On November 24th 2021, 27 migrants drowned while attempting the channel crossing in a dinghy. Vincent Delecroix’s debut release Small Boats is a shrewd fictional account, translated by Helen Stevenson, of the woman at the French coastguard accused of failing in her duty.
True facts form the skeleton of the book, but plenty of artistic liberty has been taken in deciding the protagonists’ thoughts and emotions. Boundaries are drawn and crossed everywhere; ocean boundaries, the invisible line etched between France and England and on which migrant lives ultimately depend, personal boundaries between the protagonist and her work, drawn, in her words, to prevent morals getting tangled in the high-pressure decision making of life-saving work.
Regardless of the reader’s opinion on this particular incident, and migrant crossings as a whole, Delecroix’s depiction of the protagonist is undoubtable: she is a monster, especially in the eyes of the police and the press, and we witness her reckoning with the fact that they may well be right. Arguments are formulated and justifications sought – anything to transfer blame whether feasible or not. The voice of the man on the dinghy haunts a mind that is rapidly unravelling.
Small Boats serves as a microcosm and critique of many other preventable losses. In this novel, we are not the ones who gets to decide who is worth saving, and to witness the protagonist prioritise geographical borders and principal over all else is devastating. 27 lives were victim to harsh nationalist views, but perhaps worse, were considered worth less for simply being in the wrong part of the ocean.
In the background of Delecroix’s passages the channel churns, an immense power the protagonist faces daily. The words ‘sink’ and ‘drown’ are repeatedly employed as metaphors, and reading is like being tugged every which way by restless tides as the protagonist is sucked deeper into her conscience.
Complicity is analysed to an almost excruciating extent, but sadly in vain. The irrevocable loss of 27 lives rings loud. Through the uncomfortable dissection of one woman’s negligence, Small Boats forces the reader to reflect on their own complicity in the deaths of migrants, but also the deaths of countless desperate people fleeing war torn countries worldwide. Delecroix reminds us that we all have a responsibility to not turn a blind eye.
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