Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

Jonathan Buckley’s “One Boat” explores the processing of grief through the escapist journey of its protagonist, a writer named Teresa. Although the novel is slow-paced and involves heavy themes, it manages to convey how connections and memories can be made — even amidst great loss.

Teresa travels to a small Greek town after the loss of her father, the same journey she took nine years ago following the loss of her mother. Her trips grieving the loss of the two people who brought her to life lead her to meet new people, setting her on an unexpected route of self-discovery. 

What makes “One Boat” challenging to grasp is its prose: it uses a non-linear narrative that jumps between Teresa’s first and second visit to the Greek town, intertwining with Teresa’s journal entries and descriptions of her dreams. This creates a narrative that is — at times — hard to follow, as it takes time to connect the characters and their stories through Teresa’s reflective lens. The character-driven prose gets tiring at times, especially when there’s a lack of plot in Teresa’s dreams and observations.

Although the novel revolves around Teresa’s grief, Buckley manages to add a humorous tone. The townspeoples’ comments on the mechanic-turned-poet, Petros, who has published infamously bad poetry since Teresa’s first visit, adds humor through sarcastic dialogues. Additionally, Teresa’s changing interactions with Niko, a now-married man she’s had an affair with, creates a romantic and nostalgic plot line. Reading through how the characters and their relationships change over time is certainly entertaining. It adds different perspectives to the plot, swaying from Teresa’s thoughts and journal entries, and it allows the dialogue to adopt a more humorous tone.

Just like the people she meets, Teresa also changes throughout her visits. This change is depicted by her reading habits, as she goes from reading “The Odyssey” in her first visit to “The Iliad” in her second. With “The Iliad” depicting the Trojan War and “The Odyssey” chronicling Odysseus’ journey back home after the war, Teresa’s decision to read the books out of order parallels her own journey. Her first visit, after experiencing the loss of a parent for the first time, is a journey borne of grief and sorrow, similar to Odysseus’ tumultuous journey home. However, in her second visit, Teresa seems to be even more lost, like she’s at war. During the latter visit, she is aimless, struggling to draft a book amidst doubt and having conversations about free-will whilst questioning her own existence.

“You’ve changed. We all change. The Odysseus who comes back to Penelope isn’t the Odysseus who left,” says Petros, reflecting the shifts within each character between Teresa’s visits.

Even during her last visit, Teresa has a notable change of mind. She goes from thinking the second visit would be her last to wishing she’d see everyone again, from questioning her own writing to defending her coverage of dreams in her book’s draft to her editor. 

Through these ever-changing characters, Buckley highlights the impermanence of people and relationships, a trait made clearer with the theme of loss. However, he also contrasts this with the permanence of memory. After all, Teresa chooses to come back to the same town and meet the same people that have stayed with her over the years in memory. The town and its people offer her an escape from the loss, whether through romance, friendly banter or deep conversations that she immortalizes in journal entries.

In the end, we see how Teresa’s search to escape from her day-to-day life at a time of grief takes her to the small Mediterranean town time and time again, a town that offered her the solace she’s been seeking. Because of this, the novel reminded me of going to the familiar corners of your hometown on a sunny day during summer break and the warmth it brings even if you’ve not been there for a while and you’d hardly call it home. If you’re looking for a summer read that is character-driven and slow-paced yet contemplative, “One Boat” is the pick for you.