A young shrimp fisher’s horizons are broadened by the arrival of a stranger in this atmospheric Booker-listed tale
Y
ou don’t think you need a novella about a folk-singing shrimp fisher living with his mother on a fictional stretch of isolated coast until you read Benjamin Wood’s Booker-longlisted fifth novel, Seascraper. Wood conjures wonders from this unlikely material in a tale so richly atmospheric you can almost taste the tang of brine and inhale the sea fog.
As unexpected as his previous four books – which range from a campus intrigue (The Bellwether Revivals) to a sensitive study of a Glaswegian painter (The Ecliptic) – Seascraper follows the daily trials of Tom Flett, a “shanker” who scrapes the sand for its yield at low tide with his trusty horse and wagon, risking his life in a job that is simultaneously boring and dangerous. Tom is clearly in the Hardyesque tradition of unworldly young men who tend the land or work with their hands (Gabriel Oak, Jude Fawley), and it’s this that alerts us to his vulnerability to charmers and chancers.
Apprenticed by his pop at 14 (“every other Flett had been a shrimper, going back to his great-grandpa”), Tom nevertheless longs for a life less circumscribed. He yearns to perform folksongs in the local pubs and court local girl Joan, but lacks the courage for both. An avid reader, he has swallowed “half a library” at a young age, yet finds himself tied to a job that gives him little fulfilment. Meanwhile, his widowed mother entertains gentleman suitors in the front room, perching on the sofa in her best clothes.
