The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan: A Review

Survival in a lifeboat might sound like a easy plot line, but it astounds in the hands of debut novelist, Charlotte Rogan. In The Lifeboat Grace Winter, age 22, sails from Europe to America with her new husband in order to meet her new mother-in-law. After an explosion on luxury liner, the Empress Alexandra, Grace’s husband Henry secures her a location on a lifeboat. She survives three weeks in the overcrowded lifeboat. Upon rescue, she finds herself on trial for murder-one more form of survival.

1914. Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Seaman John Hardie takes charge on Lifeboat 14. His maritime knowledge enables him to adjust to alterations in their circumstances. It also gives him the grit to place a boot in the face of a lost soul attempting to climb aboard the already dangerously complete lifeboat. When he is not giving orders, he remains aloof or expounds on scientific maritime facts and lore.

In this tiny boat adrift in a boundless ocean, the author examines whether or not murder justifies survival. The owners of mother ship, the Empress Alexandra, saved funds by constructing lifeboats to hold only eighty percent of their intended capacity. “Capacity 40 persons” says the plaque on Grace’s lifeboat now holding 39 men and women. A thing or an individual ought to give.

Told in the first individual by Grace, the survivors’ ordeals and fates are reveled in a series of flashbacks. Lifeboat duties are assigned. Stories told to pass the time turn out to be untruths as individuals “whisper down the lane.” We learn Grace’s continually changing opinions of other passengers and assessment of their fate. She fills in back story about her relationship with Henry. She is “in the middle of a nothingness that was anything, or every thing that mattered.” Circumstances worsen. Camaraderie veers toward suspicion. Surprising rivalries and alliances create. Deprivation and emotional decay further weaken any hope for the survivors.

We learn early on that Grace has been married for ten weeks. Did Henry spend for her inclusion in the rescue? What does she know of her husband’s fate? Can Grace come by way of this knowledge with her innate belief in man’s goodness intact?

A Princeton graduate, author Charlotte Rogan lives in Westport, Connecticut. She spent her childhood surrounded by sailors. In the book’s trailer, Rogan relates her interest in writing the story was perked upon perusing old legal texts. There she found the story of two drowning soldiers floating on a plank that can only help one particular. The case examined no matter whether or not it was murder for one particular to push the other off if the plank would only hold a single man. Little, Brown and Company recently released The Lifeboat. It is becoming translated into eighteen languages.

Rogan’s rich debut novel,The Lifeboat, interlaces many layers of petty jealousies, shrouded motives, moral dilemmas, and psychological complexities. What are the boundaries of human civility? How humane are we when pushed to the brink?