A boy builds a machine to connect with his late mother in novel 'How to Build a Boat'

Jamie O'Neill is different from other 13-year-old boys he knows.

He spends a lot of time alone and in his head. His lucky number is 3 and his favorite color is red. He loves tall trees, rainy weather and difficult math problems. He also loves curves, cats, books with dust jackets and rivers, especially the Brú, which flows through his hometown on the west coast of Ireland. As Jamie's first day of secondary school approaches, his father, Eoin, hopes his son will be able to fit in and make friends. But Jamie's singular mind is preoccupied with a more pressing desire: to create a perpetual motion machine that will connect him with his mother, who died bringing him into the world.

Jamie illuminates the pages of Elaine Feeney's second novel, "How to Build a Boat." Set in the author's native County Galway, the book follows this special teenager as he navigates a hostile environment, joins forces with unlikely allies and tries to find order in the chaos that swirls around him.

On Day One at Christ's College, Jamie comes up against bullies and is subjected to a moralizing lecture from the principal, Father Faulks, about becoming "a great." Jamie isn't the only one who feels he doesn't belong there. His English teacher, Tess Mahon, has had her fill of Faulks and his acolytes. Life isn't any easier for her out of school: Her attempts to conceive a child through IVF are proving fruitless and her relationship with her husband is souring.

Jamie and Tess form a bond. He comes to regard her as an "orientation, guide, counsellor [sic], teacher, nature lover" and, quite possibly, friend — "though he was unsure of how you went about putting the title of friend on another person." Tess also gets close to a new woodwork teacher, Tadhg (sounds like "Tige") Foley. After meeting Jamie, Tadhg proposes that they build a boat like his handmade currach. As the project gets underway it brings forth a variety of helpers and unites a community. But can the endeavor fulfill one boy's dream and give new purpose and direction to thwarted lives?

At one point in the novel, Jamie is at a low ebb: "I live in fiction," he says. "My life is the plot of a bad book." In actual fact, his skillfully depicted life is at the center of a wonderful book that earned its rightful place on this year's Booker Prize longlist. Feeney doesn't just track her young neurodivergent protagonist's movements, she also takes us into "the crevasses of his busy brain," capturing and conveying the thoughts and ideas that are "fleeting around" in streaming sentences or jaggedly lyrical phrasings.

Equally believable are emotionally damaged Tess and "outlier of outliers" Tadhg. We follow all three characters throughout this affecting and compelling novel, hoping that at the end of it — like their boat — they will have a chance of moving forward without foundering.

Malcolm Forbes has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

How to Build a Boat

By: Elaine Feeney.

Publisher: Biblioasis, 304 pages, $18.95.