Girl. Boy. Sea

This rich narrative tells the story of Bill, adrift in a small boat after the yacht on which he is a passenger is destroyed in a storm off the coast of Morocco. Alone and prey to hunger, thirst and fear, he rescues Aya, a migrant Berber girl who is afloat on a barrel, barely alive. 

Vick writes vividly about the privations and terrors of their precarious existence and his attention to practical detail brings their hardships into stark relief. They learn to communicate with each other and trust builds between them. To distract themselves from their bleak situation, Aya recounts tales from The Arabian Nights and these weave into the fabric of their days to provide escapism, magic, wonder and a commentary on their plight.

They are overwhelmed with joy when they reach an island, but, like some of Aya’s stories, it is a poisoned chalice, inhabited by Stephan, who trafficks migrants across the ocean in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats. Vick presents us with the irony of his situation-shipwrecked in exactly the same way as the migrants whose lives he placed in mortal danger and mentally disturbed by his prolonged isolation. When he is killed in an attempt to rob and murder Aya, it is a relief to both protagonists and readers.

At sea again, Bill and Aya are followed by a huge shark, whose menacing shadow takes the reader back into the world of myth and legend. When Bill is badly injured whilst attempting to kill the beast it is Aya who nurses him and, when their boat is brought to land by an astonished fisherman, she slips away, like a character from one of her stories, to take her revenge on the warlord who decimated her village and her family. She leaves Bill a message and two of the jewels which are her legacy and which she has carried with her throughout her journey.

When Bill has recovered, he returns to the place of his rescue to try to find Aya, accompanied by his father and the captain of the yacht in which he set out on his original journey. Vick resists the temptation to sell the reader short by tying up loose ends so tightly that they strangle the story and leaves Bill with Aya’s letter, which points towards a possible future for them both but which leaves many paths to follow in order to achieve it.