Close Quarters

Close Quarters is the sequel to Rites of Passage and the second volume of ‘A Sea Trilogy’. In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fete-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is ‘going to pieces’. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams.

Golding wrote the first draft of a sequel to Rites of Passage in 1981, but this story was much darker than what would eventually become Close Quarters. Golding wrote subsequent drafts at his new house Tullimaar, near Perranworthal in Cornwall. His happiness at this move was certainly reflected in this much more upbeat novel.