Mythic, epic, lyrical and alive, THE BOY FROM THE SEA by Garret Carr is a roiling read, rollicking, redolent and robust.
Found washed ashore in Donegal Bay like some Moses in the bulrushes, a baby, brought in by the tide, laid in a barrel. Adopted by Ambrose and Christine Bonnar who already have a son, Declan, the eponymous boy from the sea doesn’t remain anonymous for long, becoming a source of scuttlebutt, fascination, and mystique in a town caught in the turmoil of a rapidly changing world.
The story begins in the Seventies and storms through the ensuing decade and then some, with old traditions giving way to new policies and technologies, especially impacting a major part of the village’s economy, trawling.
“Each evening seagulls wheeled above returning trawlers and the sun sank fiery orange into the sea, giving us an understanding of our place on the round earth.”, intones the third person narrator of the novel.
The third person narrative device conjures a chorus commenting and commentating on the comic and the calamitous, the magic and the tragic events that course through this mesmerising tale.
Sibling rivalry is a main circuit cable that runs though the book, between Declan and the foundling, Brendan, obviously, but also between their Ma, Christine, and her sister, Phyllis Lyons, spinster carer for their cantankerous dad. Phyllis feels true hereditary trumps adopted offspring and cold shoulders Brendan, encouraging her father to do so too.
Blood, biology and belonging broil and boil into a brew of stories swirling around the boy from the sea, mystical and mundane, profane and profound.
A scene where Ambrose and Christine admire and comment on each other’s physical scar tissue after a passionate session in the sack is sublimely rendered and is illustrative of the poignant and often playfulness of the prose.
THE BOY FROM THE SEA is an absorbing read likely to defeat any early to bed resolution, unless you like to read in bed, in which case it will prompt an early recline with little risk of slumber. Written with an intelligence and elegance so lavish it prompts the heart and the mind with an appeal that cannot fail to stir the most cynical reader.
THE BOY FROM THE SEA by Garrett Carr is published by Picador.
