There’s an old adage about never judging a book by its cover. The same should hold true for its title, at least in the case of Yannick Murphy’s Things That Are Funny on a Submarine But Not Really. As it turns out, a sense of humor is key to surviving on a sub, but so is occasionally beating the crap out of your shipmates just to pass the time in the big steel tube of dumb.

With an opening reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, this coming-of-age novel isn’t exactly a lighthearted look at submariners in the Pacific Ocean. Set in the relative calm of the near-present day — with its notable lack of high-seas warfare — the story captures the monotony of life aboard an American nuclear sub, which primarily entails endless tedium punctuated by the occasional catastrophe (despite what Navy recruitment brochures would have you believe).

The story is told from the perspective of Dave, aka Dead Man; after years aboard the aging vessel, even his closest buddies don’t know his real name anymore. Dead Man, having no solid plans for adulthood, enlisted right out of high school. He gets regular emails from his parents reminding him to aspire to more, so he knows what to expect any time he phones them from the base on Guam:

“When they ask what’s new with the boat, I tell them same old, same old, and say goodbye, saying I love them before my mother can tell me to stop smoking and before they can ask me about what college I’m going to go to after I’m done with the Navy.”

Eventually, he does make it to school; the latter part of the book sees him back on dry land once his tour is up. But it’s the submarine section that shines.

This is partly because Murphy casts light on the unfamiliar (to most of us) world of life under the waves. In peacetime, it mainly consists of sailors waking up, performing their respective duties, enduring spotty — or nonexistent — internet access, and spending the rest of their hours trying to break free of the claustrophobic boredom without unintentionally (or intentionally) killing each other. They’re truly a motley crew, as Dead Man reflects:  

“Sometimes I think of our submarine as the Noah’s ark of all different types of humans. If we were to sink to the bottom of the ocean and be found hundreds of years later, there would be no shortage of a diverse gene pool with which to start colonizing the planet. Did I say sink to the bottom of the ocean? Belay that. We don’t like to joke about that.”

He’s both self-aware and in tune with the men around him. When his closest friend, Grenadier, descends into an addiction to the painkillers prescribed by the sub’s doctor, Dead Man attempts to protect him while performing his litany of other duties. And when another longtime friend is suspected of spying for the Chinese, it’s Dead Man who’s tasked with monitoring him. He knows full well that choosing loyalty to a friend over loyalty to the United States is a decision that could follow him onto land — and all the way to the bucolic Midwestern college campus where he hopes to become a writer.

The book’s closing section finds Dead Man as a fish out of water (sorry) on that campus, but as the author shows, it’s not so easy saying goodbye to submarine life when that’s all you know. There’s a big reveal that requires Dead Man to reconcile friendship and mortality, but for readers who’ve been paying attention, its dramatic punch may be weaker than Murphy hoped. But no matter. The novel works because Dead Man — his voice, his thoughtfulness, his journey — works. You’ll root for him as he grows into himself and proves too smart to stay forever stuck in a big steel tube of dumb.

Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the second-most-prolific book reviewer and first video book reviewer in the 140-year history of the Free Lance-Star newspaper. He writes a weekly humor column for the FXBG Advance that you can pay for (or you can just click a tab that lets you read it for free, which is what his friends and family do).