Vincent Delecroix

In other words, I kind of lost sight of what a human life is, with these shedloads of migrants getting dumped in the sea every day. But it's okay. After those few minutes, I completely recovered my humanity. I am not a monster.

One night, an inflatable dingy sets out from Dunkirk, on the coast of France, to cross the English Channel. It's vastly overloaded with twenty-nine refugees, mostly men, but some women and children, and the small motor is insufficient and will eventually stop working. show more And the dingy will begin to lose air. What happens that night is not in question, one of the people on the boat, a young man, calls the French rescue service for help and over the course of the following hours, the woman on the other end of the line will tell him that he should call the British services as they are close to English waters, that help will come, and then that help will not come. She does not call for the French rescue boats to launch, and even tells a ship that sees the floundering boat that they should not help them, that rescue vessels are on the way, although she knows this is untrue. The record and recordings of the calls become part of a case against her, leading to her being questioned by a woman not so different than herself, and as the woman responds defensively to the shock of her interrogator, she thinks over the night, and what she did and didn't do.

This is based on a true story, which is recounted in the introduction, and the focus of this novel it to explore what the woman at the heart of the story was thinking as she made callous comments about the people on the sinking boat, and whether she regretted her words or actions. A character study of a woman whose sees the things she said as just things everyone else believes and how one can justify a callous disregard for the humanity of others. show less

Vincent Delecroix's “Small Boat” is a remarkable novella that uses a contemporary tragedy to meditate on guilt, responsibility, culpability, human interconnectedness, and, ultimately, death. Although the novel is rooted in the migrant crisis and inspired by the real drowning of twenty-seven migrants attempting to cross the English Channel, Delecroix's ambitions are far broader than political commentary. He transforms this specific event into a searching moral inquiry that lingers.

The show more narrator is a female French coast guard employee whose responsibility is to coordinate rescues of migrants in distress. She was on duty the night of the drownings when rescue vessels never arrived. With the exception of a brief but harrowing middle section depicting the absolute terror aboard the sinking boat, the novella consists largely of a police investigation designed to determine who bears responsibility for the catastrophe.

What makes the novel so intriguing is Delecroix's decision to make the investigator a virtual doppelganger of the narrator herself. The two women seem so alike that one begins to wonder whether the interrogation is occurring only on the surface level of the narrative. It can also be read as an internal monologue in which the narrator examines her own responsibility from two competing perspectives: professional negligence and human empathy.

The first perspective challenges the notion of blame based solely on proximate cause. Certainly, the narrator failed in her duties. Rescue efforts were poorly coordinated between France and Britain, and people died as a result. Yet the investigation repeatedly broadens the circle of responsibility. Why were the migrants there in the first place? They were fleeing poverty, violence, and oppression. Why are they forced into such dangerous crossings? Because governments struggle to manage mass migrations. Why did rescue efforts fail? Because the coast guard lacked sufficient resources to confront a humanitarian crisis of enormous scale. The further one traces causation backward, the harder it becomes to isolate a single guilty party.

The counterargument is rooted in a broader conception of human responsibility. Here the novella recalls the famous words of John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." Donne's assertion that every death diminishes all of humanity hovers over the novel. When the narrator reflects upon the sea as a kind of consuming evil and describes the land as humanity's fragile bulwark against it, the echoes of Donne become difficult to ignore. The question is no longer merely who caused the deaths, but whether every human being bears some responsibility for the suffering of others.

What impressed me most is that Delecroix refuses to become judgmental. He allows both sides of the argument to be heard fully and fairly. The protagonist and antagonist—who may in some sense be the same person—argue competing theories of responsibility with intelligence and compassion. The novel's tone is one of understanding rather than condemnation.

Yet despite his generosity of perspective, Delecroix never loses sight of who suffered most. However, complex the political arguments become, however diffuse responsibility may appear, the migrants remain the principal victims of the crisis. The change in perspective in the brief middle section is devastating. After spending so much time inside the protagonist's detached reasoning, readers are suddenly confronted with the physical reality of terror, cold, exhaustion, and desperation. The contrast between bureaucratic abstraction and human suffering could hardly be sharper. It serves as a reminder that philosophical debates and bureaucratic investigations ultimately concern real human beings facing unimaginable fear.

“Small Boat” is a slim novel with enormous intellectual and emotional weight. Delecroix's prose is lean, controlled, and remarkably effective. The novella maintains a relentless focus on a single event while steadily widening its scope to encompass larger questions. He uses this tragic incident not to advance a political agenda but to ask enduring questions about duty, compassion, and the obligations we owe one another. The result is a powerful and deeply humane work that deserves a wide readership. show less

Small Boat is a short book, but it leaves a long impression. Delecroix is a novelist, as well as a philosopher and a teacher. This book makes you uncomfortable and prompts you to break out of complacent thinking. It is a work of fiction, but based on actual events. It is a philosophical novel that explores ethics and the ways people justify their actions. It makes you empathize, even if you don't agree. This leads to a certain amount of reflection on the reader's part, considering what you show more might do in a similar situation, and then consider why you would. Part 2 is simply harrowing; it brought me to tears. This is the kind of novel I like...the kind that stays with you. show less

Senseless violence, pain, and cruelty are part and parcel of our existence now. War, deaths, suffering have ceased to be isolated incidents. This omnipresence of violence and death has caused a sense of numbness - a desensitization to suffering. Visceral reactions are replaced by mild grimaces and cries for justice are replaced by a sigh of resignation.

In Small Boat, French philosopher Vincent Delecroix questions this resignation, this pervasive apathy that exists towards specifically show more migrants.

Who is responsible for the deaths of 27 migrants as a result of their small dinghy capsizing on their way to the UK for a better life?

Is it our narrator, the distress call operator who received 14 calls from one of the men in the dinghy pleading to be rescued but ultimately failed? But, why did she fail? Was it due to negligence, or was it a lapse of judgement, or was it incompetence, or was it the practical considerations of her job? So, are the authorities blameworthy for placing the technical considerations? Or, is the blame on the circumstances that forced the 27 migrants to flee, leading them on an inherently dangerous path with a dinghy ill-equipped to handle the raging sea?

So, do we blame the sea for raging? Or, do we blame God (if you believe in one)? Or, do we blame the collective humanity that watches from their cushy chairs as some of us are out in the sea clinging to life at the edge of a dinghy as it falls apart?

This book fictionalizes the real incident from 2020 (the introduction by Jeremy Harding provides the relevant context) where the distress call operator was recorded uttering the words - “It wasnt me who asked you to leave” to the panic stricken migrants as they essentially begged for their lives while slowly drowning. They persevered for 3 hours - in the 3 hours the French rescue boat was only 20 kms away, while the UK authorities were misled, while a cargo ship passed the drowning migrants that was asking to “let it be because the UK authorities were on it”.

We follow an interrogation of the distress call operator by a police officer (or perhaps her own guilty conscience). The author takes us into her mind as a way to move beyond our kneejerk reaction of denouncing her actions as monstrous - it asks us difficult questions about our own empathy and actions.

The book is written in Stream-of-consciousness with the exception of Part II of the novel that provides a possible account of what went down with the migrants in the dinghy [it can be interpreted as an attempt at empathy by the narrator]. It is introspective, compelling, and ethically unsettling. Given the escalating violence all over the world, the book raises important questions and principally highlights our collective need, as individuals, to keep humanity alive. show less