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Title details for The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr - Wait list

The Boy from the Sea

A Novel

by Garrett Carr
ebook
Pre-release: Expected May 13, 2025
0 of 1 copy available
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Set on Ireland’s west coast in the 1970s and 80s, a captivating debut novel about a baby boy who is discovered on the beach beside a small fishing town, as told by the locals who fall under the boy’s transfixing spell.
"Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment."—Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses
Ireland 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar offers to bring the child into his own family: his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and up the lane, Christine's sister and aging father. The townspeople remain fascinated by the baby, now named Brendan, as he grows into a strange yet charismatic young man.  
The Boy from the Sea tells the story of a family and community, all thrown into turmoil by Brendan’s arrival. The family's fortunes rise and fall over the years—as do the town's, because nothing happens to one family here that doesn't happen to them all—as the forces of a voracious global economy and modernized commercial fishing wreak havoc on their way of life. In the village, Brendan and Declan are wildly different and often wildly at odds; out on the sea, Ambrose worries about his children, but cannot afford to tear his attention from the brutal work that keeps his family afloat. As the world around them keeps changing, the mystery of one boy’s origins pulls them all toward a surprising, stormy fate.
Both outrageously funny and incredibly moving, The Boy from the Sea is a dazzling novel from a major new voice in Irish literature.

  • Creators

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  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2024

      Carr makes his debut with a novel that has seen hot auctions and preempts across the globe. It is set in 1970s Donegal, Ireland, and centers on a baby boy found on the beach who is adopted by fisherman Ambrose Bonnar and his family. This one family becomes a lens for the changing world, as well as Irish village life and much more. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      March 15, 2025
      A surprise arrival at an Irish fishing town upends a family and community. The debut adult novel by Carr opens in 1973, as a barrel carrying a newborn baby appears on the shore of Killybegs. The arrival of a Moseslike prophet? An infant abandoned by a desperate young mother? The novel's collective narrator notes that the townspeople are open to various interpretations. After being passed from home to home, he's adopted by a fisherman, Ambrose, and his wife, Christine, who name him Brendan. The boy's arrival stokes resentment in his new older brother, Declan, and it intensifies the sibling rivalry between Christine and her sister, Phyllis, who's taking care of their widower father down the lane. Neither's sour mood will appreciably dissipate in the decades that follow. Carr's depiction of this milieu is expert on two fronts. First, he's gifted at capturing the excitement and tension of seafaring life, as Ambrose struggles to keep his beloved ship functioning and profitable amid high seas and an increasingly corporatized industry. Second and more important, Carr thoughtfully explores the ways Brendan's peculiar origin story complicates a variety of family relationships, as well as Brendan's own self-image--for a time in his teens, he and the community take the prophet interpretation seriously, and he delivers "blessings" around town. Declan's decisions, as well as the sisters', often hinge on their subconscious feelings about Brendan and need for Ambrose's esteem, which Carr grasps as both liberating and constricting. Later chapters explore Brendan's true provenance, but even without that information it would still be a sharp, well-made work about the complications of everyday parenthood and siblinghood. An intimate and psychologically savvy domestic drama.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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