Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve
This is Garrett Carr’s first novel for adults. Set in Donegal, on Ireland’s west coast, it brings to life the small community of Killybegs, with its deep connections, struggles to maximise its meagre assets, and wrestling with relationships.
The boy is in fact a small baby, a few days old, washed up onto the shore in half a blue plastic barrel. Ambrose, a local fisherman takes the little bundle to his cottage where he lives with his wife, Christine, and two-year-old son, Declan. A strong bond immediately is formed between Ambrose and the child. He persuades Christine to care for him temporarily, but this evolves into baby Brendan being adopted into the Bonnar family.
Carr employs a narrative technique that draws the reader into the happenings in the village, by writing in the first-person plural. Our experience there is heightened by this inclusive style which is lightened by his wry gentle humour.
With a beautiful poetic detail, the author traces how the easy pattern of life in the community is changed. From the very start, Declan resents the newborn and staunchly refuses to regard him as his brother. He becomes withdrawn and is at times treats Brendan meanly, starkly demonstrating his dislike.
Ambrose is delighted and cares for him while Christine is pragmatic in providing dutiful motherly attention. Her acceptance of the baby creates a gulf between her and sister, Phyllis, who resentfully is a full-time carer for the father, Eunan, on the verge of dementia.
Some Irish writers are gifted with the ability to convey accepted truths with a kind of magical lyricism. Carr does this in the book with a marvellous skill.
He has set it in 1973, a year of change for Ireland, as well as the small village reliant on fishing. Joining the European Community brought intrusion of bigger well-equipped boats from the Continent, which poor Ambrose concedes can bring in one haul greater than his daily catch over a 20-year time frame.
His aging boat, declining stocks, a near death incident on one expedition transformed his outlook to the life he had long lived and even loved. He is compelled to leave his community and seek work in England.
Christine, having been a cool hearted, selfish sister, becomes a friend to Phyllis, both seeking solace in their loneliness.
The boys change as the years pass too. Declan’s frustration and resentment manifests in different ways.
As he grows up, Brendan becomes a favoured visitor to various lonely people, and he is known for bestowing blessings and generally cheering them with gentle kindness. He appears to have the ability to relate to them in a special way.
Certain dramatic scenes interrupt the quiet rhythm of life for the Bonnars in particular. Ambrose overwhelmed by rage attempting to smash a prized dish, the six-day ordeal in a raging sea, with engine failure and no radio contact; but it is the shattering of the tense atmosphere of the funeral which is the most shocking.
All this has the backdrop of the wild, fiercely changing beauty of that part of Ireland which is contrasted by the quiet persistence of the inhabitants of Killybegs, doggedly existing and adjusting to the arrival of a baby in a barrel.
Here, in his novel, Garrett Carr brilliantly charts the changes that inevitably come.
The Boy from the Sea
[2025]
by Garrett Carr
Picador
ISBN: 978 103504 455 9
$34.99; 322pp