A slow and meandering journey into memory and loss, as a British woman returns to a greek island she visited 9 years prior when her mother died, to grieve her now dead father.

The book has quite a simultaneous blended and fractured structure making it hard to distinguish dreams from reality and one scene from the next. This helped play into the grieving aspect of the novel but it made it hard to follow at points. Definitely a unique read and one that has rightfully received praise but just maybe not for me.

I read this because of its Booker long listing - as others have noted: for fans of Rachel Cusk.

It is about a British woman who travels to the Peloponnese on her own to contemplate the loss of her father and make time to think. She's visited the same little town 9 years earlier when her mother died, and she revisits that first stay based on the notebook she kept. She also looks for the people she met.

I suspect the Booker-judge rooting for Katie Kitamura picked this one as well. It is a similar little book in that it creates a suspenseful atmosphere not by a spectacular plot but by withholding important background information. Some of it is never revealed.

Buckley's work is more philosophical though, it explores big questions, and conversations are important to unpick them.

Somewhat unfortunately, I was more impressed by the accessible way the ideas were described than fascinated by the philosophical ideas themselves.

It was all quite enjoyable, but lost me a bit in the final chapters (except for the surprising final chapter!). Nice to have read it, but don't see this make the shortlist.

ONE BOAT by Jonathan Buckley is a highly introspective account of Teresa’s stay on a Greek Island in the aftermath of her mother’s death, having visited the same island 9 years earlier following her father’s passing. I really enjoyed the structure and form of this - memories of her prior visit so seamlessly woven with the present as well as snippets of her journaling showing her interpretation of observations and interactions with those living on the island. The writing itself was also terrific. Substance-wise, I think I was waiting for a moment of profoundness to occur, an original realisation about grief or memory perhaps, but it never really came. I appreciate maybe that wasn’t the point, but then I’m not sure I understood what was! This left me with not an entirely bad reading experience but not a very memorable one either.

Without care, there is no connection....

One Boat tries to talk about a lot of things, there is grieving at the loss of a mother and a father, grieving at the loss of a marriage. Teresa has chosen a particular quiet village in Greece as her place designate to grieve and get herself together. She has come here nine years ago at the death of her mother and now once again at the death of her father. She goes around the village, thinking ‘thoughts’ and interacting with the village people, with Petros for philosophy of life, with Nikos for sex, with Xanthe for complicity, with John for some moral dilemma. Ah there are also dreams involved though I found it hard to distinguish these from the other moments.

I found One Boat to be rather fragmentary with Teresa all over the place and the writing following her. In fact, I think that Buckley plays around with the idea that all this is our life, true and valid. However, if he wants my attention while reading then let me confirm that I found it extremely hard to make heads or tails re what I was reading. As Patrick says in the book itself, I needed momentum, I needed a direction. Otherwise, I remain lost in the book and I’m already lost enough in my own life, my own thoughts, my own dreams and I did not have the reading impetus to care about Teresa.

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley is an enjoyable and well-written novel. Reflective, thought-provoking and poignant.

“ You can’t live in the past and nobody lives in the future.”

“ Everywhere I looked, the daily script was being enacted. The actors may change, but the actions do not – selecting from a menu of speech”

Where do you begin with a review of One Boat by Jonathan Buckley?

This is one of those books that makes you feel that you’ve been taken on some kind of mind- bending journey of philosophy, deep reflection on connections and the logic of existence .

This is not an easy read- it certainly hasn’t a linear plot and sweeps back and forth between two key periods and events before and in between.

This is the story of Teresa a woman who returns to a Greek island where nine years before she was grieving the death of her father and now returns following the death of her mother and the end of a relationship. Teresa is attempting to piece together who she is now, who she is now and how she moves forward.

This is a journey of reconnecting with past encounters- the changes in others lives; Niki the diving instructor who she had a brief relationship ( now married) ; Petros the mechanic who has encounter trauma and has turned to poetry as a form of expression and Xanthe the waitress now the owner of the previously visited cafe. Lives move forward , attitudes change , connections continue and break. Happiness, sadness, regrets… She also meets John- a man grieving the death of his nephew who has come to the island to take revenge on the killer..is he linked to Petros?

Teresa keeps a journal of brief phrases and words- observations of her days and encounters.. these offer a poetic element to the prose

What the title The Boat means could be explored in many ways - this is a philosophical read. Are we just single boats on a sea of life? Or is that cliched , too simplistic?

Each dialogue makes us think about our own relationships - responses to life

This is a book that will divide readers - a joy or a frustration . This is a book that needs to be revisited. This review could certainly change after a second read as a more insightful response could be uncovered.

Challenging, original and understandably receiving plaudits and attention.

This is a book that teased me - just as I thought I understood Jonathan Buckley’s intentions, I found myself twisted in another path of thoughts.

If you have the time then this is a one sit read as you need totally immersion …or is it that you need time to reflect after each chapter - breathe, cogitate and then advance

A novel of wisdom but not plot driven .

When her father dies, Teresa returns to the small Greek town she stayed in when her mother died nine years earlier. There, she tries to get her thoughts in order, but but it isn't easy when the present overlays the past. As the days count down until she must return home, Teresa finds herself needing to know the truth about something that happened on her last visit.

One Boat is a slow but short read, driven more by Teresa's narration than by the plot. In between scenes from Teresa's stay, we encounter her thoughts, dreams, and memories, and the central crux of the book seems to be how the lives of two of the people Teresa met on her first visit may or may not intersect. I loved the way the reader has to work to find meaning in the story as it floats between past and present, sometimes without clear distinctions. Yet One Boat is enigmatic rather than confusing, and it centres around only a few characters, all memorable in their own way. I also loved the way it evokes that holiday feeling, as Teresa spends her time on tourist activities, and I was impressed by how Buckley seamlessly threads observations about the darker sides of tourism into the narrative.

One Boat's ending is a little abrupt but not dissatisfying, and I loved the way it came to embrace its metaliterary themes. This book won't be for everyone, with its reflective and somewhat enigmatic narrative, but it's short enough that I'd encourage you to give it a go. It wasn't quite a five-star read for me, but I can definitely see myself returning to it (and I wouldn't be surprised if my rating goes up when I do).

I'd been circling Jonathan Buckley's writing for some time (as you do), before reading his last book, Tell, which I didn't really get on with. I found One Boat rather more engaging and impressive. Like all good books, it's in part a subtle and insightful discussion of the process of writing itself, but also a powerful exploration of issues like death, love, and belonging. Its plot centres on the return of Teresa, its narrator, to a small Greek coastal town, nine years after her previous visit, which followed her mother's death. This second visit follows the death of her father. Events from both visits are described and characters recur in a way that blurs without confusing the reader (not as simple as it sounds) and while little is resolved in the narrative, there's nothing at all dissatisfying in that. Although a short novel, it is wide-ranging and thought-provoking - "A long life and a short life are the same, because the present is the only life we have - the same for everyone' (a key theme of the book). At other times it is subtly comic, as in Teresa's refusal to include a description of sex: "Some adjectives could be deployed: 'wonderful' would be one. My language fails' (another theme). There's also lots of imagery of theatre and role-playing, as characters try, and fail, to understand each other and their lives. It ends with an invocation to move forward, which somehow goes to the heart of the book's intention and its power. Another great book published by Fitzcarraldo.

'One Boat' is a small, beautifully crafted novel that deals with big ideas. The novel is narrated by Teresa on her return to a Greek coastal town which she had visited nine years previously following the death of her mother; now, her father has died and we follow her descriptions of both visits to this town, her interactions with some o the locals and her memories and reflections of her parents and her ex-husband.

Jonathan Buckley's prose is both restrained and precise, with Teresa often quoting from her own diary entries as she tries to capture her recollections as accurately as possible. The novel takes in reflections on sex and relationships, justice, the existence of souls, and language itself - one of the more intriguing strands is a volume of poems published by Petros, the local car mechanic, the simplicity of which beguiles Teresa but leaves most of the local residents nonplussed.

Teresa's understated voice is one that I found totally authentic, making this a compelling and powerful novel. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an ARC to review.

This really reminded me of HOT MILK by Deborah Levy, reflective and completely transportive, I didn't want it to end and must go to Greece ASAP.

Despite this being under 200 pages long, it took me a while to get into this book. I found it quite a challenge to motivate myself to pick the book up and continue reading, but I persevered due to it being quite short. However, if I were to have DNF’d this book, I would not have missed a lot.

The premise seemed like something I would really enjoy, but unfortunately there was no real conclusion or character development. I thought there would be some thought-provoking ideas about self identity and development, but that was not the case.

A palimpsest of feelings
—
In any other publisher’s hands, this would be a uplifting summer beach read, of a woman newly grieving who returns to a favoured spot of a remote Greek seaside town, and there reforges connections from her previous visit. But this is a Fitzcarraldo book, and what a book! In a seemingly linear narrative, the narrator contrasts and compares her two visits to the same unnamed town, layering her memories, feelings, dreams and thoughts in a palimpsestic philosophical exploration of selfhood, belief and relationships, both inter- and intrapersonal. Professionally a lawyer, if beginning to question her motivation to become one, the narrator notes her moments in the town, making inferences and connections between the conversations she has, the things she sees, the books she reads—a book of poetry by a local mechanic, the Iliad—and observations of the people of the town, the day trippers, the tourists.

The book sets memories on top of memories, feelings alongside feelings, giving us a sense of a personality that knows some of itself to the nth degree, whilst other parts remain forever unknowable mysteries beyond logic or reason. Her late parents appear in visceral memories but also in sunlit visions and snatches of dreams, barely scribbled down in the morning before fading into a lingering mood. Buckley places us so close to the narrator that it’s almost stifling, the languid language reflecting the place in which she can be fully herself, alone and entire, without the encumbrances of ex-husband, work, daily life, to be surrounded only by what she remembers, what she thinks, what she experiences. The final chapter, in a kishotenketsu twist, puts all that has gone before into unexpected clear and stark definition, suddenly thrust into a labyrinthine worlds enfolded within worlds. What a book!

Four and a half stars.

I admit to giving up with this one, just skipping to the end to discover there wasn’t actually a conclusion worth bothering about. I found the book really tedious, and the writing far too wordy with convoluted sentences that seemed to lose track of what the author was trying to say. It’s the story of Teresa, an English lawyer, who returns to a small Greek island after the death of her father, an island that she had visited nine years earlier after the death of her mother. The narrative interweaves her present experience with recollections from that previous trip as she reconnects with the people she met back then. I had no interest in Teresa, nor in her banal musings and trite observations. There’s no plot as such, which is fine as long as it’s balanced by interesting people doing interesting things and having interesting thoughts. There’s none of that here. There’s little flow to the narrative as events are constantly interrupted by Teresa’s musings. I’m actually at a loss to say what the point of the novel is. Mere naval-gazing, I suspect. Not one for me, anyway. I was tempted to give it just 1* but there are occasional flashes of thought-provoking content, albeit not enough to keep me invested. So I’ve been generous and given it 2*.

I confess that I struggled to get into this short novel. I liked the premise of the woman returning to a place she'd felt safe and encountering the same people but with, perhaps, different results.

The first time corporate lawyer, Teresa, goes to the town is after the death of her mother; The second following the death of her father. She meets the same inhabitants whose circumstances have all changed to some extent. She remains there for some weeks whilst writing an account of her time and experiences.

There really are no conclusions in the book. It felt more like a woman struggling with various philosophies for life but never coming to a conclusion. The most interesting part for me was her meeting with a man called John who was struggling to come to terms with the suicide of his sister. But again, this does not have a conclusion.

There were times when I thought it was beginning to flow, only for Teresa to get involved in a dream sequence or a philosophical discussion and I lost my way again.

Perhaps this book wasn't for me.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy.

On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly – her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.

A beautiful, hypnotic and atmospheric read with a fluid movement seeped in philosophical thought. We never have any solid ground to stand on as Buckley essentially writes about what it is to be human,

This was a beautifully written book about grief and overcoming grief in life.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley is a dreamlike, quiet, and meditative novel that lingers in the mind long after reading. I was drawn in by its atmospheric setting, its character-driven plot, and, perhaps most of all, its questioning of what constitutes a “story.” The novel seems to deliberately resist conventional narrative structures, instead unfolding in a way that mirrors the ebb and flow of memory, conversation, and literary reflection.

That said, I found myself at times distracted, my attention drifting in a way that made me wonder whether this was a fault of the novel or simply a natural response to its elusive, almost hypnotic style. Some themes—grief, belonging, betrayal—are touched upon but feel underexplored, as if Buckley deliberately holds them at arm’s length rather than fully engaging with their emotional weight. While this restraint aligns with the novel’s overall tone, I couldn’t shake the sense that certain moments, particularly towards the conclusion, lacked the depth or resolution I had hoped for.

Ultimately, I appreciated One Boat more as an experience than as a fully satisfying narrative. It’s a novel that invites reflection, one that lingers in mood and atmosphere rather than in plot or dramatic development. While I admired its quiet intelligence, I was left with a faint sense of something unfinished—perhaps intentionally so, but nonetheless leaving me slightly underwhelmed.

One Boat transported me to Greece, not only in setting but in spirit. It's an evocative novella that feels like the perfect companion for a holiday.

I especially enjoyed the novel’s structure, the self-awareness of the narrator, and the way it unfolded like a story within a story - a beautiful exercise in metafiction. The theme of returning to places and reliving memories is such a lovely concept.

My only real critiques are that it took me some time to realize and fully embrace that the narrator was female, and the frequent dream sequences, as is often the case, felt less engaging. Yet these are small quibbles in the face of a novella that otherwise captivated me.

There’s something enthralling about glimpsing fragments of lives. Well into the novella, I was convinced this would be a five-star read - I found myself highlighting passage after passage of exquisite prose.

I received a copy as an eARC, but I will be purchasing a physical copy upon publication.

What a beautiful, odd book, if at times hard to penetrate.
I very much liked Teresa's thoughts on Greece, the Greeks and her willingness to immerse herself into village life, and I also found her relationships with the Greek people fascinating - even if all of them spoke better English than most Greeks I've encountered.
I was more bemused by some of the more philosophical points of the book and the point of John's plot line but for the evocation of Greece this was a winner for me.