Review of The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

Carr's newest novel is a captivating series of character studies within a tightly knit Irish seaside community in the late 1900s. While characters struggle to make ends meet, support each other, and avoid giving in to the least generous parts of themselves, tragedies and wonders shape their community in this lovely, heartbreaking and heart-wrenching tale.

So this was having a family. You might mean well but hurt them anyway. They had reactions and felt disappointments you couldn't predict.

In a seaside Irish town in the 1970s, a baby is washed up on the shore. As the community wonders at his mysterious, whimsical appearance, they embrace Brendan, as he is ultimately named, as one of their own, yet hold him separate--and, for a time, credit him with the power of bestowing blessings upon them.

There are also murmurings that Brendan surely came from among them somehow--for how could a baby in a half barrel lined with aluminum foil survive a long journey? (And, the most cynical among them gripe, what fool thought that aluminum foil was a worthwhile addition to the barrel?) Yet the tough, hardscrabble citizens largely suspend their disbelief and build Brendan into an almost mythical figure, calling him for the rest of his life the Boy from the Sea.

These parents knew you could never tell how a child would turn out, naturally yours or not. They had learned, fundamentally, every child washes in from the sea, washes up against the ankles of their parents, arms outstretched, ready to be shaped by them, but with some disposition already in place, deep set and never quite knowable.

But the world of the story is grounded in day-to-day stressors and challenges. The country is reeling from economic troubles; Brendan's older adoptive brother deeply resents his presence; and conflicts and complicated dynamics underscore friendships, family relationships, and the community as a whole.

The surrounding community is so essential to the novel, the story is told in an omniscient point of view from the perspective of the town.

The Bonnar family who adopt Brendan are amazed by his presence and adoring of him--with the exception of Declan, two years his senior. Declan's petty cruelty and frequent refusal to acknowledge Brendan as a brother persists for years and shapes Brendan's personality and manner. Their father Ambrose is a fisherman with a big personality, daring ideas, and no head for business; money is a struggle for the family. And their mother Christine is strong-willed and a force within the family, yet she has barely extricated herself from her gruff, sexist, demanding father and her bitter older sister, who is desperate for Christine's company and determined to undermine her happiness from their childhood home just down the lane.

The story is a fascinating study of relationships, with heartwarming moments and heartbreaking developments alike. Brendan is not the main protagonist, despite the novel's title, yet he is central to the story in that his presence pushes others to determine what they're about. He remains steady in the face of external upheaval (and Declan's exceptionally poor treatment of him), until even Brendan begins to waver and to seem for a time unsure of who he is and what he is made of and made for.

When Carr offers various measures of character growth and resolutions toward the end of the book, they are reassuring and lovely, sometimes heart-wrenching, and fittingly complicated.

I listened to The Boy from the Sea as an audiobook.

More Irish Story Adoration

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