Acclaimed St. John’s novelist Paul Butler explores class tension and culpability in this short novel, which takes place in 1925, 13 years after the Titanic disaster. Butler employs a psychological approach to imagine how the event might have haunted survivors. The novel’s protagonist is an actual historical figure: erstwhile White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, a man who was publicly ostracized and scapegoated for the catastrophic shipwreck.   

During a luxurious dinner at the Palm Room in London’s Ritz hotel, Ismay and his daughter, Evelyn, spot some old acquaintances: Miranda Grimsden and her mother, Agnes, fictional Titanic survivors. The Grimsdens likewise make eye contact from across the room, leading to a series of confrontations and revelations about the events surrounding the sinking of the ship. As the perspective shifts between Miranda, Evelyn, and Ismay, Butler creates a mounting sense of restlessness and anxiety around his characters – the Titanic becomes the elephant in the room, always threatening to wreak havoc.

Beneath the veneer of polite conversation, Ismay revisits the horrors of the disaster, while Evelyn attempts to shield him from the Grimsdens’ judgment. Miranda, meanwhile, shamefully regrets an accusatory letter she sent Ismay as a child, and gingerly picks at even more painful buried memories.

Butler covers a lot of ground in a short space, and the flashbacks are vivid and well executed. Though the dialogue is at times clunky and overly expository, the use of multiple perspectives creates an engaging puzzle that unfolds over the course of the story, associating the Titanic’s sinking with a breakdown of class and traditional moral values.