Intimate as can be, yet far-reaching and profound, this beautifully written novel about family and community, loss and love has been chosen as a LoveReading Star Book. An abandoned baby captures the interest of an entire village in 1973, over the next two decades the ripples of his arrival continue to spread. Narrated from within a small Irish fishing locality yet focusing on one particular family lends this story a knowing and intense voice. These people, this story, reaches into the heart of what holds a community together with humour, compassion, pain, and fear all strumming through the pages. Author Garrett Carr writes an exquisite and lyrical pen, I felt planted and as though I had roots in this setting of traditions and fierce independence. The sense of atmosphere and place is immense and yet somehow familiar as it took me by the hand into the unknown. I loved the detail, the small items of note that build to make this story colourfully and authentically real. Yet the legitimacy of the feel and tone of the words also veer into an otherworldliness too. Original and powerful The Boy From the Sea picks you up into a wild and exuberant dance of emotion and experience. Highly recommended.
'Compulsive reading. Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland's west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan Bonnar by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts him, Brendan will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.Ambrose, a man more comfortable at sea than on land, brings Brendan into his home out of love. But it's a decision that will fracture his family and force him to try to understand himself and those he cares for.Bookended by the arrival and departure of a single mesmerizing boy, Garrett Carr's The Boy From the Sea is an exploration of the ties that make us and bind us, as a family and community move irresistibly towards the future.
'Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment' - Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses 'Beautifully written - gorgeous modern folklore' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater 'A novel of heart-bumping power . . . breathtaking' - Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea 'I was gripped' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Author
About Garrett Carr
Garrett Carr teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, and has published three YA novels with Simon & Schuster. The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland's Border was published by Faber in 2017 and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Garrett is a frequent contributor to The Guardian and The Irish Times. The Boy from the Sea is his debut novel, published by Picador Books.
