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 around: 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 strange, sly and self-assured novel, in which both nothing and everything happens…. There is a great deal of freight on board One Boat, but it packs so neatly into 168 pages that it never feels overburdened. This is a novel to be returned to as a place in which to think, just as Teresa returns to her Greek town.’
— Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
‘Teresa’s story emerges in non-linear fragments of reminiscence and notebook scribbles…. An understated story about selfhood emerges from the flotsam of memories and jottings. When Buckley at last pulls back the metafictional curtain in the book’s final pages, he formalizes his narrator’s driftings and draftings. What seems at first a set of disparate, unpolished vignettes proves to be a masterfully unified conceit.’
— Rachel Armitage, Literary Review
‘Exactly why Buckley is not already revered and renowned as a novelist in the great European tradition remains a mystery that will perhaps only be addressed at that final godly hour when all the overlooked authors working in odd and antique modes will receive their just rewards.’
— Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement