How To Build A Boat by Elaine Feeney

I came to read this book because it was it was long listed for the 2023 Booker Prize, which is a list that I more or less read top to bottom each year. A motherless, neuro-divergent boy, Jamie, bonds with his childless teacher, Tess. Very few people connect with Jamie in a way that works for him, and not is Tess able to do so, she appears to get him when so many people around him do not. Jamie’s first day of secondary school was a complete catastrophe, except that he met Tess, an English teacher who treats him with kindness. Tess, like Jamie, never got to know her mother. Each feels lost in their own way. Tess and Jamie spend the school term getting to know each other and themselves. They learn to find their own places in the world, away from the expectations of others. Along the way, Tess, who’s struggling with infertility and a crumbling marriage, develops an attraction to the school’s woodworking teacher, who helps Jamie with a boat-building project that may allow him to process his mother’s death at last. Much like I found to be the case in The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night, scenes depicting Jamie’s challenges are made all the more upsetting by the fact that he cannot understand the full danger of the bullying he faces or of the bigotry being planted in the students’ minds by school staff members. His inborn rationality proves both a help and a hindrance, serving as a barrier to adults’ bad intentions and to more flexible ways of viewing the world that could help him better deal with his overwhelming emotions. This is ultimately a sweeter look at living with autism.