Reviewed by Norrie Sanders
It is one of life’s ironies that a ship that sinks is more likely to be remembered than one which stays afloat. Who remembers the name of the Titanic’s sister ship? The Olympic was on the Atlantic the night Titanic sank and retired gracefully after a reliable and illustrious career of nearly 25 years. Yet the Titanic has had all of the attention, being, by some estimates, the subject of some hundreds of books.
The loss of a vessel that was the world’s largest, barely 5 days into her first and last voyage, was an epic tragedy. 1500 people died on that freezing night in 1912 and the 675 shocked survivors were mobbed in New York by over thirty thousand people. And interest has barely waned since.
Lisa Wilkinson could not resist stepping into the fray when she discovered an antipodean angle to the story – Evelyn Marsden was the sole Australian survivor of six who boarded. She was also one of the more fortunate of the women on board because her beau, and future husband, had missed out on a doctor’s position on the Titanic and was safe on board another ship. With an unforgivable shortage of lifeboats, the vast majority of men – fathers, sons, husbands, lovers – on the Titanic lost their lives.
The opening chapters introduce us to Evelyn and many of the passengers (from billionaires to penniless migrants) and the circumstances that led them to the Titanic. The next part is the first four and a half days of the voyage. The bulk of the book is about striking the iceberg, the sinking and the rescue. The final chapters are the aftermath, including inquiries, fake news and recriminations, and with the fate of some of the survivors.
With over 500 pages and an arresting cover, the physical book looks like an airport blockbuster. Yet Lisa displays a light touch and lets the characters and events tell their own story. For example, the sense of foreboding leading up to the disaster is felt through the actions of a couple of the passengers – a rich woman is haunted by a fortune teller’s predictions before she boards; and an anxious mother sleeps through the day to keep watch over her family by night: One member of the family must be alert when disaster comes and her mother is determined to take the night watch [p148].
On the eve of the sinking, the Titanic’s owner – J. Bruce Ismay, is much pleased with the speed of the vessel and more sure that they are certain to break records and see the Titanic forever in the history books. This is a typically deft passage, conveying both Ismay’s conceit and the irony of his dream of glory.
The book has sufficient technical information to bring the ship and its perilous journey to life, but it is fundamentally a story about people and how they behave in a crisis. It reinforces the important role that women played in the rescue, at a time when gender equality was a pipe dream.
Lisa tells us that the key is to make the readers feel like they’re in the story, not just reading about it [p5]. She says that she has learned from her husband (author Peter FitzSimons) to make historical stories feel like novels, but backing everything up with footnotes to show this is all real [p5].
Well, if these are her benchmarks, she has well and truly exceeded them. This is a beautifully crafted narrative, in which the author’s presence is felt, but rarely heard. For those who have only seen the movie, or for those steeped in Titanic history, and everyone in between, this is a book worth every page.
Lisa Wilkinson AM is one of Australia’s most respected journalists across all forms of media; the youngest-ever editor of a national magazine, she is probably best known for her work in television. The Titanic Story of Evelyn is Lisa’s second book.
by Lisa Wilkinson
(April 2026)
Hachette Australia
ISBN: 978 0 7336 5398 8
$34.99 (Paperback); 526pp