A slightly edited version of this review appeared in the Sunday Times on 25 August 2019.
Paul Lynch seems to have avoided the cloying embrace of the mutual adoration society that constitutes literary life in Ireland. He’s popular in France where he has won numerous awards and in the USA. At home his talents are less celebrated, although he did win the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2018. Maybe he doesn’t fit the current fashion for books that are inspired by personal misfortunes or dysfunctional families. His novels are artistic creations, often based on historical events, where the author doesn’t intrude. His last novel, Grace, had its background in the Famine and his latest work is based on an extraordinary real-life story.
The title of Lynch’s absorbing book is an evocative one for the dwindling number who remember the old Bobby Darin song. But Lynch is not interested in torch songs or even Sandra Dee, his concerns are more elemental. Bolivar is a muscular fisherman with an under-developed work ethic in a vaguely South American fishing village. His usual fishing partner has gone missing after a night of revelry. He is given a new partner by his boss, a youth who doesn’t inspire confidence in Bolivar: “he is an insect from the mangroves”. The mismatched pair head off fishing. But they set out just a little too late - a storm is coming and sensible sailors are heading for port rather then the fishing grounds. The inevitable disaster ensues and the two men are cast adrift. Thus the story begins.
The outline of Lynch’s novel is very similar to a real event: the extraordinary story of Salvador Alvarenga, a 36 year old fishermen from El Salvador who survived 14 months adrift in a small boat with an inexperienced companion. Many incidents depicted in the novel actually occurred during Alvarenga’s odyssey. These included dumping the boat’s store of fish to lighten the load, bashing the already broken engine in despair, hunkering down inside a large ice box for much of time, letting strips of fish dry in the sun, drinking urine, and catching and eating a turtle. However, Lynch’s concern is not just the minutiae of survival or the gripping yarn of men battling the elements – although his account of these is exciting and persuasive and draw the reader onto the boat with the desperate fishermen. His main interest lies in the existential struggle within - how men handle themselves in extremis. Beyond the sea and the sheltering sky we encounter ourselves – in the dark depths of our consciousness and the troubling memories that bubble to the surface. As the two characters slip the ties of civilization, the mobile phones, the football on TV and the other superficial distractions of modern life, they are forced to look within and confront what’s really important to them. In Bolivar’s case it’s the child he left behind when he deserted his wife following a fraught situation with a drugs cartel. “I was gone but a great storm blew me back to you.” With the insipid Hector (an ironic name indeed) it’s the thoughts of a life not yet adequately lived and now seemingly slipping away from him. He dwells morbidly on an unconsummated affair with his girl-friend. His nightmares entail her enjoying with others what she denied him.
Once they have averted the immediate dangers of drowning or starving their survival becomes a matter of battling the demons that emerge from within. The story centers on this struggle - their successes and failures. Although the book’s concerns are more existential than environmental, we get plenty of attendant detail of birds and fish with plastic in their stomachs and the sea around them constantly throws up the detritus of an ugly and uncaring world.
Paul Lynch has quoted with approval Cormac McCarthy’s view that “books are made out of books”. Lynch’s fourth novel certainly has echoes of many different writers including Melville, Dostoyevsky, and William Golding (Lynch’s protagonist’s nickname is Porky – a nod maybe towards Piggy in Lord of the Flies). But the literary work this novel most invokes is Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – with its theme of crime and punishment. The clues are all present: alone on a wide, wide sea, the slain albatross, the writhing creatures of the deep, the dead crew man come to life, and the eventual spiritual epiphany (“tingling whitely of bliss”). Bolivar is ultimately just another wretched mariner (and aren’t we all mariners) who has to contend with a hard truth : “You cannot escape. When an act is committed it is written into your life.”
181 pp
RRP £12.99
