"An abandoned baby affects a whole fishing community and one family in particular in this beautifully intimate and eloquent novel."
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.
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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.
The Boy from the Sea features in the following genres: Book Club Recommendations, Liz Robinson's Picks of the Month, Star Books, Family Drama, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Sagas, Adoption and fostering, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Politics, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Narrative theme: Sense of place, General Fiction, Fiction, Family Drama, Sagas, Historical Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Politics, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Society and Social Sciences, Social services and welfare, criminology, Social welfare and social services, Adoption and fostering
The Boy from the Sea is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Boy from the Sea was written by Garrett Carr and published by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Boy from the Sea has 325 pages
£8.99
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