The Boston Globe July 30, 2002 (PDF format).
"In the wake": reviewed by David Mehegan. "Deborah von Rooyen has written a complicated, agonized, many-layered memoir if her 13 year relationship with a local yachtsman."

People Magazine, July 22, 2002
Boat Bastard, A Love/Hate Memoir
Reviewed by Andrea Higbie

She is an opinionated art director in Boston, single with one child. He, or "the Captain," as she calls him, is a Boston TV-commercial director, twice divorced. On the Captain's sloop, she is first mate. Not in all senses, though. She wants to be more than his girlfriend, but, except for their brief flings, he keeps her at arm's length-for 13 years until 1999. Van Rooyen's memoir is fresh and funny and also sad. After the Captain (accidentally?) slams a hatchback door on her nose, her 6-year-old daughter vows, "I'll take care of you, Mommy." (ReganBooks, $24.95) Bottom Line: ENGAGING FROM STEM TO STERN.

June 10 "Picks & Pans"
www.peoplemagazine.com

"Hell Hath No Fury...", July 3, 2002 ...Amazon.com

"Hell hath no fury..." but does not have such a talented one as she who has expressed it with the candor, love, humor, artistry and sophistication of this intimate memoir. Deborah van Rooyen takes you by the hand and invites you to visit the ports of call of this stormy relationship that are the tapestry against which she portrays vividly, and with remarkable economy of brushstrokes, the human foibles of the characters, including her own, that bring to life this memorable and deeply moving human saga.It is around the Captain and his thoroughbred yacht, who at center stage display exquisite style and presence topside but considerably less elegant and accomodating selves below deck, that the protagonists are unmasked.This is the work of a compassionate artist whose sensitivity and generosity give life to a cast that is above all imminently human. It is, in no way, a "bitch and moan" statement but rather an expression of courageously processed and resolved experience of abandonment and loss which keeps author and reader intact as they navigate the stormy passage.Deborah offers a compelling and delightfully readable book that belongs in everybody's beach bag for a first read, with anticipation of many subsequent revisits.....E.A

"At turns painful, funny, devastating, and eye-opening...a meticulous history of love that slices so close to the bone, the ache cannot help but be familiar." --Jodi Picoult, author of Keeping Faith and Plain Truth.

"Deborah van Rooyen has written a highly seductive account of her bittersweet relationship with a man who brought her heaven and hell in equal measures. Boat Bastard will be irresistible to all those talented and independent women who have allowed their lives to be taken over by bastards--on land or at sea. This is reality romance at its best." --Caroline Upcher, author of Down by the Water and Grace and Favor.

Cosmopolitan Magazine "red hot summer reads"
www.cosmopolitan.com

ADWEEK June 10, 2002 pg. 34, National News
SAILING AWAY
Sex. Intrigue. Advertising. No, it's not the latest vodka or perfume campaign, but a new book by Deborah van Rooyen called BOAT BASTARD. the author, who used to work in the Boston ad industry, has set the novel in that very arena. the book launched last week from Harper Collins' Regan Books division. It follows the protagonist (a thinly veiled depiction of van Rooyen), through a 13-year affair with a prominent player on the Boston ad scene - known as The Captain." The affair begins when he works for her at an unnamed Boston agency and it takes them through 13 years on his sailboat, on journeys throughout the world before she finally decides to lead her own life. "It's about him, me, relationships, working women, trying to raise a child, trying to be everything to everybody until you break down," said van Rooyen, who also owns DVRDESIGN, a Brookline, Mass, design studio. Though no names are mentioned, and minor details have been changed, van Rooyen said anyone who has been in Boston advertising for a long time will recognize whom it's all about. And the man? She sent him a copy of the table before publishing, but never heard back.

BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE BOOKS, July 7, 2002
Can a neurotic Jewish divorcee find lasting love, or even minimal grounds for compatibility, with an aging yacht club WASP? Even a child should know the answer to that one. (The author's young daughter was decidedly skeptical.) But for some reason it took Deborah van Rooyen years of on-again, off-again frustration to realize that she and the red-faced, white-haired, blue-blazered Old Boy she calls "the Captain" were never meant to share the same universe, let alone the same happy ending. Van Rooyen, (The surname a memento of a brief, disastrous marriage), a determined lady, might have been able to vanquish a flesh-and-blood rival for the Captain's affections. But she was at an insuperable disadvantage against the real love of his life, a blue-hulled, teak-decked, 36 foot sailing sloop. Van Rooyen tried to be a good (first) mate. But she couldn't tell a jib sail froma gin and tonic, and simply didn't care. Finally she gave the Captain an ultimatum. Naturally, he opted for the jib and the gin. Van Rooyen - like the Captain, a presumably recognizable figure on the Boston ad agency scene - gets off some crisp zingers in this account of a relationship bound for the boneyard. She may think that in publishing this tell-all memoir, she is fulfilling the revenge fantasies of wronged women everywhere. There seems to have been plenty of selfishness on both sides, though, and more than enough blame to go around.
.....Amanda Heller, critic and editor who lives in Newton.

Boston Herald Sunday Book Review: June 9, 2002
Cast adrift by love
"The Captain" loves to sail. Never identified by name, he is a prominent advertising film director with two ex-wives, five sons from his first marriage, and a stepson from the second. For 13 years, Deborah van Rooyen was his girlfriend - and his first mate. Van Rooyen's smart, snappy and revealing memoir is a satisfying tale told from the perspective of the "trailing behind woman". She is a professional writer and creative dirrector, who says she grows stupid on the Captain's boat, losing her verbal skills, her energy and her sense of self. Speaking for other women whose partner's love of something else - boating, golfing, working - comes first, she asks why women abandon their confidence and interests for the sake of a relationship. Carefully, van Rooyen skirts the uncomfortable nastiness of a one-sided rant with an open assessment of her own difficult and demanding personality.

Bunch of Grapes Bookstore
Martha's Vineyard, MA
"An Intelligent, hilarious, and caustic account of the author's ill-fated romance with a gruff, enigmatic, emotionally unavailable advertising film director whose relationship with the sea trumps any and all of the human attachments."

Don't Miss the Boat
Reviewer: David McKie from Hamilton New Zealand
" I don't usually read much in this genre but this one is juicy in form and content. Using consistently inventive writing and open-heart surgery with only local aesthetics for protection, the author travels over male-female oceans familiar in their choppy rhythms and treacherous currents. Yet she adds fascination through taking her own distinct bearings, standing on her integrity, getting blown off course, and finally finding safe haven - albeit not in the destination she desired. Despite the pain and love van Rooyen comes over as more than fair to her fellow seatraveller but I can't help but feel she jumped ship just in time. Otherwise he'd have sailed her into a sea of alcoholic despond infested with vapid wasps in what must be one of the inner rings of Hell. In the end, the feisty Jewishness that blocks her acceptance to the class and salt encrusted establishment proves to be a blessing - you need to read to the conclusion to understand what I mean - as Israeli directness rips the thin topsail of upper East Coast America's illusionary inclusiveness into shreds. Each time my interest began to die down, van Rooyen found a fresh inspiration to keep me reading right through to the finale and even after that she had a unexpectedly entertaining coda of friend's comments. I hope she writes a mystery next time around as this is a talent to enjoy already and to watch in the future."

Publisher's Weekly * May 13, 2002

BOAT BASTARD: A Love/Hate Memoir Deborah van Rooyen

HarperCollins/Regan, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 0-06-009354-4

The "boat bastard" in question is van Rooyen's lover, "Captain," a newly retired advertising film director with a 36-foot sailing sloop, although he could be any man with a "one-foot-in, one-foot-out" attitude to romance. The author, a creative director in Boston, fell in love with this Hemingway wannabe on a work assignment and spent the next 13 years trying to figure out what to do about him. Life on board ship is enormously frustrating for this otherwise capable woman - "I grow stupid on the boat," she confesses, injuring herself constantly, losing verbal skills and losing her sense of self. Her man is so egotistical and emotionally unavailable that parallel troubles surface on shore, whether they're in Amman, Cape Cod, the Chesapeake Bay or France. The memoir's prologue prop - a castrated voodoo doll - reminds van Rooyen of her anger at the casual slights she's suffered; the retelling of her on-again, off-again romance reminds her of the love she still feels, long after she's jumped ship. Her confessional style is funny and self-deprecating, leaking enough about her own very checkered life (her teen years on a kibbutz, her rescue of her daughter from a kidnapping attempt by her ex, her project consulting to the queen of Jordan on a venture to market Palestinian women's handicrafts) to pique readers' interest and sympathy. Fans of NPR's Satellite Sisters program know the tune: "reader, I love him, but I wasn't getting anything back."

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