The Boy from the Sea

(Hardback)

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'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 1973. In a close-knit fishing community on Ireland's west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan by Ambrose Bonnar, the fisherman who adopts him, the baby captivates the town and the boy he grows to be will captivate them still - no one can quite fathom Brendan Bonnar. For Christine, Ambrose's wife, Brendan brings both love and worry. For their existing son, his new brother's arrival is the start of a life-long rivalry. And though Ambrose brings Brendan into his home out of love, it is a decision that will fracture his family and force this man - more comfortable at sea than on land - to try to understand himself and those he cares for. Told over two decades, Garrett Carr's The Boy from the Sea is a novel about a restless boy trying to find his place in the world and a family fighting to hold itself together. It is a story of ordinary lives made extraordinary, a drama about a community who can't help but look to the boy from the sea for answers as they face the storm of a rapidly changing world.

Reviews

Compulsive reading . . . Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment -- Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses
A novel of heart-bumping power and sparkling vividness, this book evokes the seethe and surge of an island nation's sea fables while being suspicious of sentiment, often wittily so. Its depiction of a stranger's arrival recalls great rural storytelling, from Jean de Florette to Synge's mouthy playboy and the country music mystery tales in which a newcomer rides into town. This is a strange, beautiful, truly compelling triumph, a story about a very specific place that somehow comes to seem an everywhere and a people who feel familiar as faces in mirrors. A breathtaking achievement -- Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea and My Father's House
A tremendous story about a family changed by the arrival of a strange boy, which feels like an instant classic . . . huge hearted, masterful . . . Told in a captivating communal voice like nothing I've ever read before . . . The Boy from the Sea is a dazzling exploration of the ties that make and bind us, as a family and community more inexorably towards the future. I'll be pressing a copy of this book into the hands of everyone I know. -- Lauren Brown, The Bookseller, Book of the Month
A ruefully funny portrait of a dysfunctional family in a struggling town, The Boy from the Sea rings painfully true. I was gripped -- Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room
The Boy from the Sea is an utterly engrossing read. Atmospheric and incredibly moving, I was captivated by the trials and triumphs of the Bonnars. A bittersweet ballad of a novel I'll be thinking about for a very long time -- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
The Boy from the Sea has that rare quality I often find myself searching for in a novel narrative intimacy among the vastness of life. Garrett Carr is meticulous and precise in his writing the skilled invisibility of a true craftsman -- Rnn Hession, author of Ghost Mountain
The Boy from the Sea is a single-generation family saga as dazzlingly compact as it is comprehensively insightful, a love story in which the tenderness and forbearance are all the more moving for the eloquence with which the hardships and reticence are rendered. This is as impressively wise and idiosyncratic a novel as Ive read in years -- Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron
Beautifully written - gorgeous modern folklore -- Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr captures the changing feelings and textures of the latter decades of the twentieth century in Ireland more precisely than any other recent novel I could name. Its language and sensibility reflects the sly humour of its Donegal setting, and the reader is riveted by the heroic efforts of its characters to hold on to one another in the face of gale-force winds of historical change -- Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments
An original and rambunctious Irish seafaring novel that vividly portrays a community moving through changing times and tidesas lively a portrait as it is convincing. With a refreshing narrative approach, The Boy From the Sea excels in its clarity and particularity of voice -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives

Author Bio

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.