The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan
The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan
1 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Lifeboat
A Novel

Author: Charlotte Rogan

Narrator: Rebecca Gibel

Unabridged: 7 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2012


Synopsis

The sinking of an ocean liner leaves a newly married woman battling for survival in this powerful debut novel.

Grace Winter, 22, is both a newlywed and a widow. She is also on trial for her life.

In the summer of 1914, the elegant ocean liner carrying her and her husband Henry across the Atlantic suffers a mysterious explosion. Setting aside his own safety, Henry secures Grace a place in a lifeboat, which the survivors quickly realize is over capacity. For any to live, some must die.

As the castaways battle the elements, and each other, Grace recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met, and the new life of privilege she thought she'd found. Will she pay any price to keep it?

The Lifeboat is a page-turning novel of hard choices and survival, narrated by a woman as unforgettable and complex as the events she describes.

Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on July 05, 2018

1914. the atlantic ocean. 39 people. one lifeboat. where people stop being polite and start being real. oh, yeah... i loved this book. it has all the elements of a good survival story with all the furnishings of a well-written mystery novel. alliances will form, motives will be shrouded, lies and misdire......more

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

I read the book very quickly and enjoyed it as I read it, and then I got to the end and I thought, huh. Just..huh. It left me with no other thought except a certain neutral feeling that I was glad that was over and I could read the next book. So is it enough for a book to be entertaining while you re......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on September 23, 2023

A story of 39 survivors on an ill-equipped lifeboat. The lifeboat was adrift for 21 days. Rogan provides insight into what tragedy does to different personalities and temperaments. It's a story from one of the surveyor's point of view, who is also being tried for murder. She, Grace, is a 22 year old......more

Goodreads review by Arah-Lynda on July 16, 2014

To set the stage; it is 1914 and 39 people, including our narrator Grace, are adrift in the Atlantic, in a life boat that was not designed to hold so many. Their provisions are scant and the possibility of imminent rescue is at best uncertain; but for the reader this story actually begins some time......more


Quotes

"The Lifeboat traps the reader in a story that is exciting at the literal level and brutally moving at the existential: I read it in one go."—Emma Donoghue, author of Room

"The Lifeboat is a richly rewarding novel, psychologically acute and morally complex. It can and should be read on many levels, but it is first and foremost a harrowing tale of survival. And what an irresistible tale it is; terrifying, intense, and, like the ocean in which the shipwrecked characters are cast adrift, profound."—Valerie Martin, author of Property and The Confessions of Edward Day

"What a splendid book. . . . I can't imagine any reader who looks at the opening pages wanting to put the book down. . . . It's so refreshing to read a book that is ambitious and yet not tricksy, where the author seems to be in command of her material and really on top of her game. It's beautifully controlled and totally believable."—Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall