bookgazing | 'Ship Breaker' - Paolo Bacigalupi

I feel like I lost myself in ‘The Windup Girl’. Despite not being keen on the way the rape scenes were written, I felt suddenly invested in Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing career after just that one book. ‘Ship Breaker’, is Bacigalupi’s YA debut and as Bacigalupi said in a recent interview, it’s a book that takes less risks than ‘The Windup Girl’. There were times when I thought I sensed the risks he might have taken in ‘Ship Breaker’ and I do sometimes still wistfully wonder where those alternate paths might have led ‘Ship Breaker’, but Bacigalupi’s second novel is still so...oh I don’t know, invigorating that it’s only made me feel more curious about watching his writing career unfold.

Nailer works light crew in the ship-breaking yards (the blurb says these are located on beaches along the Gulf Coast of this sci-fi, dystopian reimagining of American, but my limited geographical knowledge didn’t equip me to find this out from the text). He’s small enough to crawl into the old, fossil fuel run ships that sit and rust near the beach. He and his crew spend all day under the beating sun, or in the depths of the ships, breaking out the copper wire for their hard, exploitative boss Bapi. Nailer dreams of finding his own pot of ship breaker wealth, like the rich gangster boss Lucky Strike who controls the beaches trade, but he knows he’s just as likely to end up like Jackson Boy, a boy who got lost inside a ships tunnels and died.

Members of each light crew are tattooed in the same way and are supposed to be bonded like a family. Nailer often refers to members being ‘crew’ like we might refer to a member of family being blood. Bacigalupi uses that idea of being crew to examine two of my favourite ideas to see in literature – what makes a family and where the limits of loyalty lie.

In the opening chapters of ‘Ship Breaker’ Nailer falls into a hidden deposit of oil in an old ship and one of his crew, Sloth must decide whether to let him drown, so he won’t alert everyone else to the oil that she hopes to smuggle out to sell herself. She decides to leave him to drown, abandoning the code of crew co-operation. When Nailer does escape in a dramatic scene where he dives down and explodes out of a hatch in a shower of oil Sloth is kicked down the beach, with her crew tattoos slashed because a boss won’t keep a crew member who betrays them. As members of her former crew naturally ostracise her for violating crew code, she has little hope for the future. In this one episode Bacigalupi powerfully shows the idea of an artificially created group who members must develop bonds of trust and believe in those bonds in order to survive. However, as much as Nailer and the others may try to convince themselves that crew bonds are strong Sloth’s behaviour shows just how easily these ties can be broken if one person has an advantage over the other.

After almost drowning in his very own Lucky Strike Nailer goes home to his abusive, crystal sliding father, Richard Lopez. One small, nice touch is that Nailer’s father is most commonly referred to by his full name, which distinguishes him from other characters. The contrast between his full name and others partial names gives every mention of him a dread weight that emphasises how others respect and fear him. Nailer is terrified of his father’s unpredictable moods, with good reason as Lopez has a disturbing level of strength and repeatedly shows that he will harm his son for profit or fun, because of the clouding influence of drugs. While Nailer’s relationship with his father is extremely toxic, Nailer is unable to completely break the connection, because he has good memories from before his mother died and his father started crystal sliding. So, when a gigantic World Killer storm hits the beach while his father is passed on in a shack right in the middle of the storm’s path, Nailer convinces a neighbour to save him.

Of course, this is Bacigalupi writing so Lopez doesn’t take his unlikely survival as a sign to give up the crystal and booze. Lopez twists back and forth between knocking Nailer on his head because of his cunning and praising his cleverness for much of the book. Nailer has to try to understand the direction his father’s mood swings will take whenever they meet and while blood and memories keep Nailer from trying to slit his father’s throat their relationship can never be positive. He is always looking elsewhere for some kind of support structure he can trust. That’s why he invests so much value in ideas of crew holding people to him, even as he’s realistically aware that any kind of bond can be easily broken.

Nailer’s strike comes eventually. An expensive hydrogen clipper runs aground in an isolated part of the island during the storm. Only Nailer and a girl named Pima, know about the wrecked ship. She is the one member of his crew that he tentatively trusts because of their bond outside of the crew (Pima’s mother is like surrogate family to Nailer and she’s the one who lifted Richard Lopez out of the shack during the storm). The two agree to find a way to hide any moveable goods, before the crews on the beach find it and they begin investigating it, only to find Nita the young owner of the ship still alive on board. Nailer must try to forge new bonds of trust with her if he has any hope of collecting the reward she says she’s worth, but Nita is full of secrets and will take any chance to escape. When Nailer’s dad’s freaky dangerous crew surprises them and claims Nita along with the ship it becomes even more important that Nailer and Nita begin to work together to evade Nailer’s dad and Nita’s enemies. With a half-man (a genetic breed between man and dog) named Tool (Tool!) whose character creation has plenty to say about the creation of loyalty the two work their way to the drowned cities to find Nita’s allies.

It is hopeless to try to write a review of reasonable length that fits in everything so great about ‘Ship Breaker’. Maybe I’ll have time to come back and talk about other elements later (but you might have noticed I’ve been a bit blog world inconsistent this year). For now let me quickly tell you five things I really love about this book and then link you to some more people with persuasive lists about this book:

1.) Tool – Bacigalupi’s creation of half-men is such a fabulous sci-fi idea and reminds me a bit of a centaurs from fantasy (except obviously with a scientific explanation). It’s Tool that really makes this idea pop into life though, because the reader gets to see the true complexity of the life of a half-man (who is essentially supposed to be genetically encoded with a bond-servant’s type of loyalty). I am so excited that Tool may be back in Bacigalupi’s next book set in the drowned cities.

2.) Themes – Bacigalupi explores some of my favourite themes. I’ve already mentioned his ideas about family and loyalty, but he also explores chance, fate, genetic personality, environmental destruction and extreme organ donation. He’s hitting a lot my idea sweet spots.

3.) It's an adventure – The plot hurtles you along and is really exciting. Peril, escape, jumping trains – cool as.

4.) Diversity and originality in diversity – Characters from India. African American characters. Prominent female characters (although this is undeniably Nailer’s story). Poorer characters. Illiterate characters. All these characters operating outside of easy stereotypes. Girls and women doing physical jobs. Male characters who are not dumbasses towards women.

5.) No one dies today! - It’s undeniable that my heart felt a lot more whole at the end of this novel than it did at the end of ‘The Windup Girl’. I happily cheered Sarwat Chadda on for killing someone in his first book and cutting out just a little piece of my heart. I’m fine with writers who kill their characters with slicing key strokes. It’s just that sometimes it is heartening when people who deserve to escape make it out of danger okay.

More Lists

Maggie Stefvater: 10 Reasons to Read ‘Ship Breaker’

Vulpes Libres: 10 more reasons to read ‘Ship Breaker’

Other Reviews

The Booksmugglers

Stainless Steel Droppings

PS. I want to come back and talk a bit more about something Bacigalupi said in his recent interview if I have time.