Set sometime in the 1950s, Seascraper takes place over a single day which sees Thomas Flett lifted out of his hardscrabble life for a few brief hours. Almost twenty, Thomas lives with his mother in a dilapidated shack he has neither the time nor inclination to repair. One spring morning, he gets up well before dawn to accommodate the tides, heading home once the day’s catch has been sold, where he finds his mother with an American man who has the oddest proposition for him. Edgar is a movie director, intent on filming a novel for which Thomas’s stretch of beach offers the perfect location. He needs Thomas’s help negotiating the treacherous waters along a coastline peppered with sinkholes and offers a princely sum for doing so. Their recce of the beach that night ends with an epiphany for Thomas. Wood’s descriptions of the bleak landscape and the difficulties Thomas endures are vividly cinematic and arresting. He and his mother lead a hand-to-mouth life with little hope of change, but he dreams of becoming a musician and catching the eye of his best friend’s sister. The arrival of Edgar with his tales of Hollywood and glamour are met with scepticism by Thomas, overcome by the hope of a friendship and a future. Things may not quite turn out the way he expected but there’s hope for Thomas at the end of this atmospheric, dreamlike novella.

So much have been already said about Seascraper, so many good reviews. So let me add my praise to this short but point out novella. Life of a main character, Tom Flett, wasn’t easy from the start. He was taken from a school at the age of 13, never being able to finish his education. He was forced to work as a seacreaper to support his family. He has had dreams to do something different in his life; composing music, reading books. One day a stranger turned up in his house and perspective of his life changed. It’s a beautiful story captivated till the very end.

I can’t help but wonder if Benjamin Wood has redefined something here about what a book should be. Singular and cinematic, it reeks of muddy sand and ancient decay; of a bleak landscape and industry that hasn’t advanced for generations. And there, with the contrast of a visiting Hollywood film director scoping this landscape, is the wonderful meeting of two people whose paths should never have crossed. It’s one of those books that transports you to the scene, which we watch through the fog in Benjamin Wood’s lens. Demands a second read, in the same way that Orbital or Lanny do. Wonderful and affecting literature. William Golding would’ve loved this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. 3.5 rounded up. When I started this book, my heart sank a little. I thought I had, once again, chosen one of these melancholy books set in the recent past in small town Ireland about people struggling and longing to be free. Well, first of all, it is not set in Ireland but in the Northwest of England and secondly although there is some melancholy to start with it livens up hugely just after half way when Edgar and Thomas go out at night into the sea. The next few pages are quite tense and gripping and I loved the scenes set in the Fogbell tavern. Thomas is a nice character and I wanted things to go well for him. There is quite the twist at the end which I certainly did not foresee and it all ends, for a change, on an optimistic note.

Thomas lives with his mother in the small, coastal community of Longferry around the 1960s. He ekes out a living driving a horse and cart out to the sea where he scrapes up shrimp to sell on. They are always in debt and the work is very harsh. Wood lists Thomas’s aching joints, pain from his ingrown toenails, exhaustion and semi-permanent state of filth and stench- I was shocked to then read he is only twenty! He has little time to socialise and is shy around the girl he likes, although he does secretly play his guitar a little, and he knows that the old ways are coming to an end, with others getting engines to go shrimping. It seems his luck has changed when he is sought out by an American film director, Edgar Acheson, who wants him to act as guide to the bleak but atmospheric beach and seashore where he works for a film he wants to make, and suddenly Thomas starts to see potential for his own life. A short and unusual story that lingers in the memory, it seems very bleak to begin with but ends filled with hope and possibility. Wood is a very visual and sensual writer, painting a vibrant picture of the biting cold, the grind and physical punishment of the work and the powerful force of the sea and the sinking sands around it. The characters are depicted effectively and sympathetically through their words and actions rather than with lots of description. The resulting impression is of a harsh and often unforgiving life that still contains many small pleasures for those prepared to look for them, and offers the chance of change when least expected. It will linger wiith me for a long time.