Seascraper
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4.5 • 22 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, this “cinematically plotted...radiant” (The New York Times) novel follows shanker Thomas Flett as his quiet life in a small English coastal town is forever changed over the course of one fateful day.
Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream.
Then a mysterious American arrives in town, and enlists Thomas’s help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, soon Thomas starts to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?
Haunting and timeless, from “one of the finest British novelists of his generation” (The Times) Seascraper tells the story of a quiet existence upturned over the span of one day, and a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This beautiful novel set in the North of England in the early 1960s follows Thomas Flett, a 20-year-old shrimp fisherman who aspires to become a folk singer. He lives hand to mouth and in close quarters with his curmudgeonly mother, who had him when she was 15 and won't tell him who his father was. The spare and atmospheric narrative depicts Tom's melancholic daily life, which consists mostly of heading out to sea in rough conditions and harvesting shrimp using an antiquated technique taught to him by his late grandfather. In secret, he plays his guitar and pines for his friend's sister, Joan, whom he's afraid to ask out. Tom's world expands with the arrival of Edgar Acheson, an American film director who pays him £100 to serve as a location scout. The payment is a huge sum for Tom and his mother, and he agrees to help Edgar navigate the shore's dangerous tides. The narrative plays wonderfully with the line between reality and fantasy, as when Tom meets his father in a dreamlike state and finds the inspiration to write a great song. Wood's novel is a rare and curious pearl.
