The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown sparked so many very, very happy memories for me.

For most of my teenage years, my sport was rowing (my first crew in the top pic; and with my dear friend Steph (left) in the second pic). I was not particularly good at it, nor did I compete at a very high standard but I loved everything about it – the early mornings on the Yarra, the particular ache in my muscles after a hard training session, the intensity of a race, hanging out with my crew, tinkering with our boat’s rigging… I could go on and on.

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body… And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite.

Brown’s book focuses on the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their unlikely quest for an Olympic gold medal at the Berlin Olympic Games. The team comprised of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers – some of the boys signed up for rowing so that they would get a decent bed and food during a time when America was in Depression.

Their strength would be an asset, Bolles knew, but rowing … was at least as much art as brawn, and a keen intelligence was just as important as brute strength. There were a thousand and one small things that had to be learned, mastered, and brought to bear in precisely the right way to propel a twenty-four-inch-wide cedar shell, carrying three-quarters of a ton of human flesh and bone, through the water with an semblance of speed and grace.

In their quest for Olympic glory, the crew defeated elite rivals from eastern universities (the well-resourced Harvard and Yale crews).

The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time – and this is key – no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength… but they have no stars.

The story is told from the perspective of one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects. Joe’s recollections are told alongside the story of his coach and a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, George Yeoman Pocock. The writing about the boat-building is breath-takingly beautiful and thoroughly immersive (I don’t think that’s the rower in me speaking, I think it is simply very good writing).

With the cedar skin attached to the shell, Pocock installed the runners and the seats, the riggers, the rudder assembly, and the trim. He took pride in using a variety of Northwest woods in his products – sugar pine for keels, ash for the frames, Sitka spruce for the gunnels and the hand-carved seats, Alaska yellow cedar for the washboards. The last of these he favoured mostly because as it aged its color evolved from that of old ivory to a golden honey hue that harmoniized with the burnished red of the cedar hulls.

I think it’s really difficult to write about sport in a compelling way but Brown creates suspense and maintains the tension to the point where I felt like I was there, watching the bow balls on shells edge forward. I feel like anyone reading this review will think I’ve been heavily influenced by my existing love for the sport, so don’t take my work for it – read Beck’s review (she’s not a rower but loved this book).

Although it’s ostensibly about rowing, Boys in the Boat also tells the story of the compromised Berlin Olympic Games and specifically, how the Nazi propaganda machine was operating in full force. Interestingly, Hitler was so determined to capture the Games, that he employed film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, who used new technology and techniques to capture the Games – the legacy of which is a clear record of Nazi propaganda in action. Her films are considered the most effective and technically innovative propaganda films ever made. It’s a fascinating parallel story.

4/5