The Boy in The Boat
Brian O’Raleigh
The Boy in The Boat by Brian O’Raleigh is one of those coming-of-age novels in which the protagonist passes through a series of crises and eventually finds redemption. ‘The Boy’ is trapped in a dystopian environment with a brutal drunken father, a lifestyle of penury and a horrific school, St Joe’s!
The Boy lives at the Alexandra Hotel, South Shore (it is still there). His father is a drunken bully who beats up the kids and the mother, who struggles to make a precarious living taking in and feeding tourists. The boy and his brothers go to Mass and Benediction at St Cuthbert’s but his parents rarely attend church. The prospect of Divine retribution for the sin of recusancy adds to the despondency in the background. Br. Sheehan, the head at Joe’s, and Br. O’Rourke persecute and beat him at Joe’s. When the father goes to complain to the headmaster, he is soft-soaped out of the grievance which makes the boy’s life even worse. His tribulations are somewhat eased by the arrival of a Yorkshire terrier but the animal, sensing the hostility in the environment, escapes and makes its way back to Yorkshire.
He takes refuge from the vicissitudes of life in a boat called the Kathleen R., one of an assembly of craft apparently abandoned by their owners. In the boat, he is the captain and in this shelter, he is safe from the cares of the world. After a while, his father dies, he is released from Joe’s, and then the Kathleen R., a symbol of sanctuary, is no longer required and is sailed off to sea.
The boy, now a man, embarks on a series of adventures to prison, Australia, back to Blackpool and then London. He even tries to take up residence in Israel and fight for the Zionist cause but is thwarted by his lack of Hebrew ethnicity. During these enterprises and misadventures, he is haunted by his past and lives in a fog of drunkenness and irresponsibility.
In his final adventure, he returns to Australia where he buys a boat, naming it the Kathleen R., and embarks on a series of exploits including several storms and a crash with a tanker. Redemption comes after he is rescued by a tug from imminent death and he finds God and a path to sobriety. Now all the ghosts are exorcised, including his afflictions at Joe’s, and he can take up a normal and regular life.
The book is a good read, somewhat lacking in verisimilitude and dated in its format, but with powerful symbolism and well structured, with continual waves of pathos and emotion. Altogether a fine work of stylish literature.