When your community ostracizes you, you build your own boat/community.
I had never heard of Elaine Feeney before, but my book club elected to discuss this book and I’m so glad they did because I never would have read it otherwise.
The main character of this book is a boy named Jaimie living with his dad and grandmother in a small town in Ireland where everyone knows everyone else’s business and is super judgy about it.
I don’t think it’s ever said that Jaimie is on the autism spectrum, but it’s made clear in the way he talks and thinks. Everything is stated as a fact and taken very literally. The chapters that focus on him are comprised of sentences that are very short and clipped.
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator did a great job with those sections, especially when considering the fact that he was able to read in a completely different style from the sections focusing on Tess.
Tess is a teacher at Jaimie’s school and they strike up a friendship when he starts spending time in her classroom to avoid the boys who are bullying him.
Tess is married and has been struggling to get pregnant, but repeated rounds of IVF haven’t worked. It’s probably just as well because her husband and his family are awful.
Tess is from a lower class than her husband and in-laws and they look down on her for it. They also don’t seem to have any compassion for how hard she’s been trying to get pregnant and how painful that process can be.
Tess and Jaimie both start spending more time with Tadhg, the woodworking teacher.
Before we get into Tadhg a little backstory on Jamie: Jaimie’s mother died very young giving birth to him and no one talks about her. The only connection he has to her is a short video clip of her at one of her swim meets.
Jaimie decides he wants to invent a perpetual motion machine. In describing it, he reveals he hopes a perpetual motion machine would enable him to connect with his late mother.
Tadhg convinces him that a boat is a kind of perpetual motion machine, and thereby convinces him to build a boat.
So the book is about Jaimie learning how to build a boat, but it’s also about how to make a life for yourself in a world that has very strict boundaries on who you should be and how you should live your life.
It’s about the Catholic Church being awful, especially when it comes to their misogyny and homophobia while simultaneously sheltering sexual predators and leaving their students vulnerable to said predators.
Feeney packs a lot into a fairly short book and it’s all beautifully written. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.