How to Build a Boat

August 1, 2023
Two teachers and a teenage boy in western Ireland go through painful changes and, yes, learn to build a boat. Math-obsessed teenager Jamie O'Neill is raised by a single father after his mother died during childbirth. Literal-minded and sensitive, he keeps himself secure by making lists and working on his notes for a perpetual motion machine. So when he starts at a new school, run by the conservative Father Faulks and full of bullies, he's soon spending most of his time in the classroom of Tess Mahon, a kind English teacher with her own fractured family: a dead mother, an alcoholic father, and a cold husband. They're both drawn into the orbit of woodworking teacher Tadhg Foley, who proposes that an Irish boat, a currach, could satisfy Jamie's desire for perpetual motion and keep him out of the sway of some of the more toxic boys. Feeney tracks both Jamie and Tess, and the sections following Jamie are the stronger. She uses a stream-of-consciousness first-person narration and poetic syntax to capture the boy ("I would like that solitude for this boat, / so / I resisted their invitation / but Mr Foley passed no notice"). Tess' sections, written in a more traditional style, seem flat by comparison. The novel is an intensive probe of contemporary Irish society; the island's culture of shame and silence is picked apart (one minor character exits with a defeated repetition of "We don't talk about it"), as is the continuing influence of the Catholic Church. But the characters find meaning in the currach and as well in the concept of meitheal, or communal effort. Jamie's conflict is to reconcile the haphazard construction of the boat and the perfect machine he has imagined. He must leave his comfort zone, just as Tess must leave the safe prison of her marriage. Feeney has insights into boyhood and, more importantly, has written a great boy to help her tell them.

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August 21, 2023
Irish novelist and poet Feeney (As You Were) delivers the touching story of a neurodivergent boy and the community that comes to his aid. In Galway, 13-year-old Jamie O’Neill dreams of building a perpetual motion machine that, in his mind, will connect him to his late mother, who died giving birth to him. Jamie knows the exact number of steps from home to his new school, where he faces bullies, beatings, and a school president, Father Faulks, who is hostile to students with special needs. Fortunately, he finds a sympathetic teacher in Tess Mahon, who is wilting under the strain of an unhappy marriage. Tess, in turn, introduces Jamie to the new woodwork teacher, Tadhg Foley, who suggests working with the boy to build a currach, a kind of boat. Pretty soon, other boys at the school join in the project, giving the usually isolated Jamie a much-needed sense of community. Only Father Faulks stands in the way of a smooth launch for the currach. The author has a beautiful, crystal-clear prose style that penetrates to the emotional core of her three main characters, whose hurts and desires are achingly rendered on the way to a quietly triumphant ending. Readers will not soon forget Jamie and his quest to make sense of a confusing world.