A boy washes up on a Mediterranean beach, the only survivor from a migrant boat, and a local girl decides to hide him. The chapters alternate between the crossing and the day after it.
The before chapters are the stronger half. The boat is a society in miniature, with a smuggler running it as a business and passengers negotiating for position, and none of it is sentimental about who behaves well.
The ending is doing something structurally that I will not spoil and that reframes the whole book.
Won the Giller. Deserved it.
Read June 2023.
