Guest review: BELOW DECK by Sophie Hardcastle
BELOW DECK by Sophie Hardcastle (A&U. March 2020. Literary fiction). Reviewed Laura Pettenuzzo.
[image error]“Twenty-one-year-old Olivia hears the world in colour, but her life is mottled grey. Estranged from her parents, and living with her grandfather who is drowning in sadness, Oli faces the reality of life beyond university alone.
When she wakes on a boat with no recollection of how she got there, she accepts the help of two strangers who change the course of her future forever. With Mac and Maggie, Oli learns to navigate a life upon the ocean and the world flowers into colours she’s never seen before.
Four years later, Oli, fluent in the language of the sea, is the only woman among men on a yacht delivery from Noumea to Auckland. In the darkness below deck, she learns that at sea, no one can hear you scream.”
Everything about this novel is breathtaking, from the cover to the majesty of the prose and the magic of the characters. Divided into three distinct parts, Below Deck takes us deep into Olivia’s (Oli) world.
There are several characters who experience the world in ways that are not quite typical. There is Oli, who “hears the world in colour,” and Maggie, who shares her synesthesia. Maggie is also blind, which was clear to me (and likely would be to most readers) immediately. The fact that Olivia takes some time to realise it is perhaps a reflection of her lack of interaction with the disabled community, and how often such characters are delegated to the periphery of our fictitious narratives as well as our everyday lives. Not so with Maggie, who remains an important part of Oli’s life even as they live in different countries, who sees Oli clearer than Oli’s own mother ever has. In the third part of the novel, there is Brooke, who has a “scar stretching from the corner of her lip to her eye,” put there by a man. But Brooke, like the others on that Antarctic expedition, is not made small. As Oli reflects, “All of our bodies are scarred. But a scar is the way the body becomes whole again. It’s evidence that we survived.” In the ocean, Oli was brutalized and a part of her was taken and, later, in the ocean she reclaims herself.
I devoured this novel in the space of several hours, compelled to finish Oli’s story, desperate to absorb Sophie Hardcastle’s outstanding words. To review a work like this feels in fact like an act of disrespect. ‘Review’ carries with it connotations of the critical, and there is nothing about Below Deck that lends itself to critique. I sat on my bed for several minutes after having turned the final page. I was conscious of sitting with something sacred, of feeling reluctant to break the spell of Olivia’s world and return to my own.
For every act of cruelty in the novel, there is a moment of kindness: there is a juxtaposition of characters against one another. There is selfish Adam, misogynistic AJ, and then there is gentle, climate conscious Hugo, who is prepared to learn from the women in his life and from his own mistakes. There are Oli’s distant, disapproving parents, and there are Mac and Maggie, who give Oli their love and friendship without expectation. There is agony, and there is joy, too. There is hope.
Below Deck is at once a condemnation of toxic masculinity and a celebration of female strength.
You can buy Below Deck from Readings here.
Laura (she/her) is a writer of short stories and book reviews. She lives on Wurundjeri land and is passionate about accessibility and mental health.
