#BookReview of The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

‘The Boy from the Sea is Garrett Carr’s brilliantly moving tale of an abandoned baby
who rocks a small Irish town, bringing together a community
– and igniting lifelong rivalries.‘
(Publisher Quote)

[ About The Boy from the Sea ]

In 1973 on the west coast of Ireland, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Who is he? Where is he from?

Ambrose, a local fisherman, is far more interested in who he will become and – with a curious community looking on – takes the baby home and adopts him. But for Declan, the baby’s new brother, this arrival is surely bad news. Rivalries can be decades in the making . . .

Set over twenty years, The Boy from the Sea is about a restless boy trying to find his place, in a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.

[ My Review ]

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr published February 6th with Picador and is described as ‘the heart-wrenching story of an ordinary town and an extraordinary boy‘. A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year and An Observer Best Debut of the Year, The Boy from the Sea is a really beautiful and gentle novel set on the Donegal coast.

1973 sees great upheaval when a baby washes up on the beach of a fishing town, wrapped up in a barrel. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar, also a blow-in to the village, feels an immediate connection to this infant.

‘Ambrose also had the wide capabilities of an island man; aside from fishing, he could strip an engine, lay a brick, cut a tidy run of turf, drive a lorry and bone a chicken.’

The locals are all in dismay as to where this wee boy came from but it is Ambrose who takes him home with him to his wife, Christine, and young son, Declan. From the very beginning there is a shift in the air and Declan becomes very aware of this stranger, this interloper in his family. Ambrose is besotted with this baby and they decide on Brendan as his name. As time passes Ambrose’s fishing business grows and he has some success. But Ambrose is no fool and, with a healthy respect for the sea, he is well aware that the tide could turn at any point.

‘The sea could claim you silently; we lived and worked on the edge of a vast appetite’

Ambrose invested heavily in a quality vessel but, with new EU fishing laws and quotas, he feels under pressure to compete with the larger boats and also the increase in the number of international boats fishing the same area. Meanwhile, Christine’s father and sister, Phyllis, live close by, causing Christine much anguish. Her father is unwell and is now cared for by Phyllis, but there is a low-level animosity between the sisters as frustrations deepen and jealousies kick in. During this time the sibling relationship between Declan and Brendan also fractures further, with Declan now embarrassed and angered by this strange boy from the sea, holding ‘an entire infrastructure for conflict that he couldn’t simply dismantle‘.

As the family dynamics move and sway, the narrative voice of the village provides the ongoing story of a community’s daily life in all its complexities. With the raging sea playing centre stage, the locals learn to stick together in times of difficulty, sadness and joy. Brendan’s presence is beyond their norm but they accept him, almost, as one of their own, with a nudge and a wink.

Quite an enveloping reading experience, with characters that soon become friends, this deeply affecting novel is a gorgeous and magical tale. It’s deceptive simplicity hides quite philosophical moments about life’s meaning and the importance of mutual belonging. The Boy from the Sea is a very tender story about humanity, sibling dynamics and the power of the local community, a book I will definitely be returning to in the future.

‘We were a hardy people, raised facing the Atlantic. A few thousand men, women and children, clinging to the coast and trying to stay dry. Our town wasn’t just a town, it was a logic and a fate.’

[ Bio ]

Garrett Carr teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, and he is a frequent contributor to The Guardian and The Irish Times. His non-fiction The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. The Boy from the Sea is his debut novel.