Reading about the Ocean Ranger

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Cross Country Checkup's Christmas List of Good Reading was Lisa Moore's February—a laugh-and-cry story about the widow of one of the men who went down on the Ocean Ranger and the most memorable book I read this year. Of course I didn't phone in—who's got time to sit on the end of a phone, get interrupted by Rex Murphy a couple of times during the call, and then be restricted to only one book? I would have had to try my darndest to slip in a mention of Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster by Mike Heffernan, which is the perfect companion to Moore's novel. Heffernan has collected stories from friends, relations and workmates of the 84 men who died when the "unsinkable" oil drilling rig tipped over and sank in the North Atlantic in 1982. The stories are framed as monologues (as in "A Monologue on Things Not Looking Good," "A Monologue About Getting a Break," "A Monologue About Some Stuff Not Being True," and "A Monologue About Looking and Looking and Looking") and the distance of 25-odd years between the event and this collection means that the storytellers are able to contemplate the lasting effects of losing their sons, brothers, husbands, lovers or friends in an accident that could have been prevented, or at least mitigated, if everyone had not been chasing the almighty dollar. I couldn't put it down.