The Stranger in the Lifeboat

LoveReading Says

Faith, faithlessness, believing in unbelievable stories, grief, salvation and survival — Mitch Albom’s The Stranger in the Lifeboat explores all that alongside being a gripping page-turner. Slickly structured with scenes headed Sea, Land, and News, an unexpected, twisting mystery plays out aboard a life raft in the Atlantic Ocean and on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

The set-up scenario primes the story for peak intensity, with ten survivors thrown together in the aftermath of the sinking of a luxury yacht off Cape Verde. Owned by a billionaire who was hosting his “Grand Idea” cruise (a gathering of wealthy leaders of industry, a former President, and famous entertainers), the survivors can’t be certain what caused the fatal wrecking. But here they are, crammed together on a small life raft, exposed to the sun, storms and sharks as their scant provisions dwindle. Among the survivors are Irish deckhand Benji, who’s keeping a diary of the experience, and a little girl who doesn’t speak.

Into this comes a new stranger, a man who appears in the ocean, calls himself the Lord, and generally irritates his raft-mates. For example, the Lord tells them that all prayers are answered but “sometimes the answer is no”. A kind-of end of days reckoning plays out as one by one, and sometimes two by two, the survivors fall away. “The ocean was collecting us”, Benji writes.

As we witness the disintegration of life aboard the raft through Benji’s diary, the narrative alternates with news media coverage of the disaster, and scenes set on Montserrat — the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean — where the life raft and Benji’s diary have washed up. I especially enjoyed the story of the Monserrat police officer — his complex journey from grief to hope.

With wave upon wave of revelations unleashed aboard the raft, through the diary, and in Montserrat, The Stranger in the Lifeboat has a parabolic vibe, and keeps readers gripped and guessing to the very end.

Joanne Owen

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