For those expecting this to be like an over the top, action adventure flick where the cute and clever kids save the day, and the plucky square jawed hero pulls everyone through... forget it. Author Paul Gallico has created a dark masterpiece where he uses the disaster as a metaphor for the turning of people's seemingly ordinary lives literally upside down and stripping them of their quaint civilized comforts. Reverend Frank "Buzz" Scott leads a rag tag group of people from the dining room to hoped for salvation in the ship's engine rooms and the keel and rescue.
But the journey is far from easy, facing the perils of a capsized vessel, with obstacles like upside-down stairways, flooding passages, deep booming explosions rocking the ship, failing emergency lights, and machinery and boilers falling from their mountings. They also face their own inner demons as well. Scott fervently believing that the only way to reach safety is via the engine rooms and await rescue in the propeller shaft wings, while ignoring other possible, safer routes to the ship's former bottom.
Others in the group as well as those they meet along the way provide for drama and an examination of the human condition when placed in mortal danger. The failure of the lights results in a stampede by fear-driven crew running down a main corridor like lemmings to their deaths they are trampled, or killed by falling over stairway openings or into a large pit where a boiler tore through several decks of the upturned ship, the young girl of the group Susan is raped.
The young boy Robin, brother of Susan is lost in the blackout and crew stampe, never to be found again, and his exact fate is chillingly never revealed to the reader.
This book simply pulls no punches, though it does show the other side of the human equation as people help the elderly Rosens through the ship's twisted and inverted bowels, and Belle Rosen saving everyone with her surprise feat of swimming through a flooded corridor, though it later costs her life when she dies of a heart attack mere minutes from rescue.
When Rev. Scott dies, James Martin, a proprietor of a haberdashery, gallantly takes charge and sees everyone through the rest of the way. The ending is not easy, either. Not only is Robin never found and Mrs Rosen as well as several others die along the way, but the survivors of Scott's intrepid band must deal with the biting sting that other survivors, some left behind in the dinning room, had a much easier time in going the other route to the ship's cargo hold. The route Scott insisted they not go. But ultimately they are alive when so many others have died, either succumbing to their baser natures as the crew did during the blackout, or passively staying put, hoping for someone to come to them.
For those used to the 1973 adaptation of the movie, this book will be just a wee bit of a downer with the boy dying and his sister being raped as well as more gruesome ends for people, but the characters as other reviewers have pointed out, are far more interesting and multi-dimensional, even Susan's rapist is shown to be nothing more than a frightened young boy, who realizes the terrible thing he has done to her and runs off to his death, driven by guilt. So this is not for the faint of heart, but it is ultimately a rewarding look at the human heart in the face of disaster.
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Amazon Customer
Great story, unfortunately hasn’t aged well at all
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2022