STARRED Book Review: Little Ships

Reviewed by Elizabeth Zender

Dive into the delicate tensions of a family learning to live together again.

Death is always a tragedy. In Scofield’s Little Ships, it’s the death of Karin that turns the lives of her family upside down. 

Her husband Nick is afloat in a sea of hopelessness. Her children are the ones who found her and drift together in the pain of loss. Her mother and mother-in-law cling to their grandchildren, often at odds with each other. On top of it all, the family carries a sorrowful history. Little Ships explores the mending of family in the face of devastation and the weight of being a woman tasked with holding it all together.

Karin’s husband was never ready to be a father. Moving in with his parents makes it easier for him to be absent. Eleanor and Helve are thrust into their new roles as grandmothers. They find themselves at odds with each other despite their shared goal of ensuring that their granddaughters Juni and Tilde have what they need to be okay again. But growing girls are a force to be reckoned with, especially when kept secrets make common ground difficult to find. 

Scofield relays this thoughtful story in an easy-going, omniscient narration. Helve and Eleanor search for a way to move forward, rather than a way out, and this evokes the melancholia of womanhood and growing older. This novel fills the part of us that yearns to be understood. As I read, I found myself comforted by the way both grandmothers grow together, the acknowledgement that aging does not diminish opportunities for the future.

I enjoyed this novel’s representation of the lives of older women, especially their roles within family dynamics. Scofield’s novel demonstrates the rich lives of these two grandmothers—of the wishes, wants, and worries they have. They are the glue that holds their families together, and, even when faced with indifference or outright scorn from others, they remain steady. It isn’t about strength; it’s about continuing forward, even when it feels insurmountable. As Eleanor would say, they are truly one-step-in-front-of-the-next kind of people.

This book makes me glad it’s not a debut. Now, it just means there’s more Scofield to read.

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