The Stranger in the Lifeboat: A Novel

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Well…..this review is difficult to write! If you’ve read the book, you know! So….here’s my nonreview review!

I believe that God does show up (how? through other people perhaps? through creation?) I’m fairly certain I heard God speak to me when my son had a tragic accident. It was a short phrase that I knew wasn’t from my own thoughts and I heard it (maybe not literally but I felt it) so strongly that I trusted/knew it was from God. On another occassion when I was driving along a deserted country road on the way to my father’s funeral, I felt the presence of God (or angels) so strongly that I’ll never forget the sensation. Nine people have been adrift for three days in a lifeboat without food or water. The luxury yacht they had been on had exploded, and now they have lost all sense of hope. When they spot another man floating in the water, they pull him in. He says he is the Lord. But is he? What would we do if, after crying out for help, God appeared before us? What might the Lord look like, and how would he act?

In The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion? Are the survivors in heaven, or are they in hell? The story is narrated by Benji, one of the passengers, who recounts the events in a notebook that is discovered—a year later—when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat. It falls to the island’s chief inspector, Jarty LeFleur, a man battling his own demons, to solve the mystery of what really happened. I enjoyed this book so much that I read it twice. It made me think. I like the feeling I got from the way each accepted his death and that when the man’s wife woke up to talk to him, she was not cured, but would be good.

While Albom has never been a firm favourite of mine as such, there is still something in his writing that keeps me reading his books and liking them enough. ( This is based on the four books of his I have read: two fiction and two nonfiction.) He has an ability to make one think about a common occurrence from a different angle. I guess I was looking for the same to happen with this latest work too. But all I ended up thinking about was: what is the point he is trying to make? Maybe I am too dense because the story didn’t make much sense to me at all. The explosion had come during a dinner party, and the sight of most of us in dress clothes, now soaked and ripped as we huddled inside a raft, was a grim reminder of how little the natural world cares for our plans.” Geri Reede- 39yo Olympic swimmer, short blonde hair, assertive, sea worthy, confident. Guest on yacht.Land: This timeline is about a year after the explosion. Inspector LeFleur on the island of Montserrat gets information that an empty raft from the sunken yacht has been found. While investigating this, he finds Benji’s notebook.