Review of ADRIFT by Will Dean (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This is an emotionally exhausting psychological drama about domestic abuse.

In 1994 in the Illinois/Indiana/Kentucky area, Drew and Peggy Jenkins and their teenage son Samson live on a rundown canal boat. Drew is a controlling and abusive man who uses isolation, intimidation, and gaslighting to undermine his wife. With no financial resources, Peggy is totally dependent on her husband but desperate to get away with her son. The situation becomes increasingly untenable when Peggy, an aspiring writer like Drew, has a publisher interested in her novel.

The novel alternates between the perspectives of Peggy and Samson so the reader gets to understand them quite well. Peggy loves her son and wants to take him away from Drew’s influence. Samson is bullied at school and dreams of escape as well; his plan is to do well at school so he can go away for further studies. What bothered me about Peggy is that she seems rather naive and oblivious. Samson is being badly bullied at school, but she is “grateful he likes his new school as much as he does.” Even when she witnesses her son being a target of bullies, she makes light of it: “Thank God those kids were only calling him names.” And it never occurs to her how angry and jealous Drew will be when he learns about her success in writing? The logical thing to do would be to keep her novel a secret and to use the money to facilitate an escape.

The character of Drew is problematic. He is adept at psychological manipulation; he lies, denies past events, twists facts, shifts blame, and is dismissive of Peggy’s feelings. He doesn’t want Peggy to have a paying job. He isolates his family by continuously moving the boat further and further away from the town. He even rations food, heat and water. Unfortunately, he becomes almost a cartoon villain because he has no redeeming qualities. Peggy claims he was kind and loving when they first met, but the reader doesn’t see any evidence of these traits; in fact, the book opens with a flashback to 1973 which shows the extent of Drew’s depravity.

A sense of unease permeates the novel from the beginning. The dread only grows further as the boat is moved further away from others who might intervene to help. The small boat (six feet wide and fifty feet long) is claustrophobic; it has no privacy or distance or personal space. The three people are confined and the reader feels restricted as well. The pace is rather slow; in the middle there is just repetition of gaslighting and bullying. Then the resolution is almost deus ex machina where a hero comes to the rescue.

I’m confused about the setting. The novel is set in the U.S. but British terms like kit, instead of sports gear, and biro, instead of pen, are used. Samson eats Cola Cubes, a traditional British candy? Canal boats, especially narrowboats, are common in England. The author is British so why would he choose an American setting for no reason?

This is an unsettling read, but it’s the issues with characterization, a slow pace, and the novel’s climax that bothered me.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.