ONE BOAT – Jonathan Buckley

Booker 101 Quick & Dirty Monday!

ONE BOAT : Jonathan Buckley
W.W. Norton:  4 November 2025 (US)Fitzcarrldo Editions: 13 March 2025 (UK) (I’m using the UK Kindle version)
Page Count: 168

First line: “The first time the intention was simply to find a place that was quiet, but not somnolent”

Blurbed by:

I could find no blurbs for this novel by authors on the UK edition.  I don’t know if the US version has any.

ONE BOAT is Jonathan Buckley’s thirteenth novel.  Buckley is known for playing around with literary conventions and his preference for unconventional story-telling.   He lives in Brighton, a seaside resort in England.

Don’t Judge a Book…

I’m of two-minds when it comes to the respective covers for ONE BOAT, but ultimately, I think the UK edition takes this one.

The UK edition is bright marine blue with the title printed in the center, in a simple white font.  That’s it.  The upcoming US edition features a greyscale image of a staircase with the title is a simple blue font.

The US edition calls to mind the ruins that Teresa explores as she confronts mortality and the desire for immortality.   “The castle could be my church, I told myself… I would attend the ruins.”

The UK edition calls to mind Petros’s book of poetry, published after Teresa’s first trip to the unnamed town. She reads it, or attempts to, on her second trip – buying the book from the wife of a past summer romance. The simplicity of his poetry is in stark juxtaposition to what Teresa is attempting to create.  But it is Petros’s poetry that gives us the title – and lines that Teresa eventually takes, modifies, and manipulates into her own narrative.

I prefer the blue – with the words floating like a single boat on the water.

What about you?

“The sea wants boats.”

When I finished One Boat, my first thought was “well. That was a book, I guess.” I really didn’t like it. It was pretentious and lacking authenticity. For me, Teresa is a middle-aged woman written by a man.  While there have been other selections in this longlist that I found pretentious, they at least were as smart or even smarter than the author thought them.  I didn’t find this the case here. I’ve seen the novel compared to Cusk’s writing, which makes sense – I’m still bent out of shape over SECOND PLACE being listed.  And I don’t think Buckley was remotely successful at capturing a middle-aged woman in the throes of crisis.

While reading, I briefly wondered if Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” served as muse. There are a lot of similarities between the poem and what Buckley is trying to do with Teresa,  I just think Buckley missed the mark.

The novel tackles grief, the past, mortality, domesticity, the craving of immortality, and relationships with our parents. Teresa places her memories, her story, alongside the ruins as she tries to make sense of it and to write it the way she wants to be remembered.

Best part of the novel?  Petros and the relationship he has with first Sander and then Kal.

This is at the bottom of my stack.