The Boy from the Sea (forthcoming February 2025) by Garrett Carr is an engrossing debut novel that explores the complexities of family dynamics, community bonds, and the search for personal identity, all set against the beautiful backdrop of a small Irish coastal town.

The story opens in 1973 with the mysterious discovery of an abandoned baby on the beach. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar, a man more comfortable on the water than on land, takes the child in, naming him Brendan. What seems like a simple act of kindness propels the family and their community into two decades of profound emotional upheaval, internal conflict, and soul-searching that echoes through the lives of the Bonnar family.

At the heart of the story is Ambrose, a steadfast man whose love for his sons is unquestionable, yet his inability to navigate the simmering tension between them becomes a key source of friction. Ambrose’s wife Christine is the glue that holds the family together but her devotion to her husband and sons is tested to the limits with the arrival of Brendan. Their biological son Declan harbours a deep-rooted jealousy and resentment toward Brendan, sparking a rivalry that will shape their futures.

Carr’s prose is beautifully lyrical and blends the various themes seamlessly. The narrative unfolds at a slow but immersive pace. It's a captivating exploration of what it means to belong, to be accepted, and to search for one's place in a world that's ever changing. Carr is undoubtedly an author to watch.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Picador for the invitation to review this book.

The Boy from the Sea is a moving book that follows the hardships of the Bonner family. Set in a tight knit Irish community we follow this family through a 20 year period. I loved the characterisation and the relationships explored. The observations on identify felt really raw. The prose is great with a wise voice and dry humour sprinkled throughout. There is also a sense of magical realism that draws you in as a reader. Overall a charming read about human life. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

There is a slow build up to this beautiful, emotion packed story set in the 70's in Donegal, Ireland. The finding of an abandoned baby links the various aspects of the story. It is a story of the changing economic rewards of fishing. It is the story of a family taking on a new baby and the sibling rivalry it creates. It is the story of two sisters and the burden of caring for frail but belligerent father and the fallout that cuts bonds.It is te story of a baby who grows looking for love and his own place in a family and community.
So well written with interesting characters,tough scenarios and above all emotionally engaging

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this lovely book.

The Boy From The Sea is a gentle yet quietly powerful read. Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of a family in Donegal who take in Brendan, a boy found in a barrel on the shoreline. The novel focuses on Ambrose, the father, a principled man determined to do what’s right. He believes bringing Brendan into their family is the right thing to do. While his wife, Christine, comes to accept this, the relationship between Brendan and their biological son, Declan, is complex and often difficult as the boys grow up.

The story unfolds in a small Donegal town heavily reliant on fishing—a tough place to raise a family. The author captures the harsh realities of this industry, showing how it strains families and communities. The book highlights the shift from small local fishing boats to large, industrial vessels that quickly depleted fish stocks. This shift not only impacts local families but hints at the global consequences of this move.

This isn’t an exciting, fast-paced novel, but it isn't trying to be. It is a reflective story about community, family, and how the changing world pushes people away from their roots in search of better opportunities. It is a thoughtful and rewarding read that will stay with me a long time.

This was an unusual style of book for me. It was a very gentle, slow paced story in which the reader is included from the start and throughout in the unusual third person narration. The
characters are easily recognisable as examples as those that could be found in any family of the time. The daughter who gets left at home to look after the parent(s), the rivalry between the clever child and the less clever child for example. The author deals beautifully with the changing effects over time the baby found on the beach has on individuals and on the villagers as they do with the more intimate relationships such as that of sisters Christine and Phyllis and fishermen Tommy and Ambrose. This book has so many levels and relationships I can see me returning to it again and again. A wonderful read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr.
A wonderfully written book which takes the reader back to a time when people were heavily influenced by their forefathers.
I was there when they found the baby.
I was there gossiping with the villagers.
I was there when the family struggled.
I was there throughout the turmoil and throughout the happiness.
You an be there too. Just turn to page 1.

The ups and downs of a family's life.
This book is set in the small town of Killibegs, a fishing port of Donegal on the west coast of Ireland. It starts in the early 1970s and covers the next two decades. The people of Killibegs are a tight-knit community, but an incomer, Ambrose Bonnar, is accepted into the community. He marries Christine, and they have a son, Declan.o
A couple of years later, a baby boy is found on the shore in a small barrel lined with tinfoil. There is some dispute as to whether he has been washed ashore, hence the name of the book, or was merely left there. He is temporarily housed with the Bonnars, and they eventually adopt him and name him Brandon. Declan is not accepting of this, and his animosity towards Brandon continues as they grow up, but it is not reciprocated.
This is a mostly gentle story interspersed by vivid descriptions of severe storms at sea and their effects on ships and crews. It is all told in the third person as 'we' who includes ongoing details of the lives of various individuals in the town.
This is a beautifully written and inspires compulsive yet thoughtful reading.

I've been thinking a lot about this book "The Boy from the Sea" by Garrett Carr for several days now. I've been flitting between 4 and 5 stars. The general plot, tone, pace of the book deserves a 4 but there is a beautiful line towards the very end of the book about the character purchasing an expensive pillow and it has stayed with me ever since, and for this reason this book deserves a 5. Set in Ireland in the 1970s, life is hard, with not much choice of work apart from fishing. This book isn't fancy or frilly but it does focus on the small details of every day life and you see how Brendan (the boy from the sea) affects those around him. Very understated.

The story unfolds in 1973 within a small fishing community on the west coast of Ireland, where a miraculous event occurs when a baby boy is washed ashore in a barrel. , the child is taken in by a local fisherman, marking the beginning of a journey filled with wonder. The narrative progresses at a gentle pace, allowing the reader to savor each moment and the depth of the characters’ lives. The prose in the book stands out as one of its strongest and most delightful aspects. It beautifully captures the nuances and complexities of the characters, allowing readers to truly appreciate their dimensions. Overall, it is a brilliant read that immerses you in a realm of magical realism, which happens to be one of my favorite genres.

A lovely story. Beautiful Irish location setting really added charm to the story. Some unforgettable characters along the way made for a book that flowed well with a good pace.

The author’s debut adult novel after a non-fiction book and a number of Young Adult novels, and an enjoyable one with a very distinctive voice.

The book opens in 1973 in a small but close-knit fishing town in Donegal Bay on the Atlantic Coast of Ireland. In the book’s opening chapter, a young baby boy is found in a barrel floating just off a beach on the edge of the town and the town immediately take “the boy from the sea” to their heart. After a few days of being looked after by the District Nurse, a local fisherman Ambrose Bonnar (an itinerant fisherman who eventually settled in the town and is now married to Christine and with a two year old Declan – the family living just down the road from Christine’s cantankerous father “He mocked anything frivolous: placemats, dessert, having a lie-in, suffering from your nerves. ‘Get away out of that!’ he’d shout at cream cakes and people with hay fever” and unmarried sister Phyliss) offers to take him for a night. Originally the idea is for the baby to be taken in by different families very night – but the Bonnar’s take to him, decide to name him Brendan and then in time adopt him to the approval and support of the town.

The book then plays out over decades in the lives of the family members:

Ambrose’s struggles to keep his rather traditional and low key four-man-crewed fishing vessel viable as technology and EU quotas come into play and his closest partner and friend buys more and more ambitious and advanced vessels while maintaining his discretion and modesty “If there was a trophy for not mentioning things Tommy would’ve won it, then kept it at the back of his wardrobe and never mentioned it”

Christine’s difficult relationship with Phyllis who uses her position of servitude to her father to exert a mix of guilt and judgement on Christine (including making it clear she does not approve of the adoption);

Declan desperate for his father’s attention and approval and resentful and jealous of Brendan;

And Brendan adopted by the town as some form of almost-saint, encouraged to give townfolk informal blessings but then over time struggling with a sense of slightly inflated self worth “If Brendan had quickly reverted to his original manner the custom might’ve been saved but instead he became sneaky, blessing us without invitation. We’d be queuing in Hegarty’s shop and he’d pat our arms as he went by, muttering. It was a bit much when we were only after eggs or a jar of Nescafé.”

But the real start of the book is the oft-times narrator, a collective first person voice of the town starting with the opening lines “We were a hardy people, raised facing the Atlantic” sometimes narrating the town’s views on developments in the lives of the Bonnars; sometimes noting on the town’s customs and approach to life “A note on our use of the word ‘grand’ is here required. It might sound like a relative of good or great but in our usage it was something different. ‘Grand’ was how we acknowledged that something wasn’t good or great while also saying nothing could be done and there was no point going on about it.”; often just noting the passing of time with a recurring phrase “the season turned” in a way which reminded me of Jon McGregor’s “Reservoir 13”

And often, like much of the text, threaded with a sense of dry humour as in a number of the examples I have quoted, which made it a pleasure to read.

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

In 1970s Donegal, Ireland a baby is found on the beach and adopted by Ambrose and Christine. The relationship between their eldest son Declan and adopted son Brendan is fraught from the start and we follow them, their family and community over the next 20 years to see how things turn out.

Wow, wow, WOW!!! The best way for me to tell you how FANTASTIC this book is... I read 10 pages of the advance proof and immediately pre-ordered a finished copy for me to be delivered on publication day... The writing is fabulous, both sense of place and time, and the characters are so real I felt I knew them! Please can we have a sequel??! I would be disappointed if this didn't win prizes and it's only January! Very VERY highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this, it is written in such a way that you actually feel part of the community, it is so authentic and realistic that it almost seems as if you are reading a memoir. I grew up in a similar sort of town, albeit in Scotland not Ireland, at around the same time as the book is set and I recognised so much about the community, the characters, the values, the affection and respect for each other and the relationships between families and neighbours where everyone knows instinctively when to respect privacy and when to intervene.

The book draws you in and I was invested in every character (I did particularly like Ambrose) and I felt their achievements and difficulties almost as if they were real. As the book wore on and times changed I felt almost ill with the dread of the bad times and what was going to happen in each character's life. No spoilers but there is a very sad surprise near the end but with their realism and stoicism, the family and community comes together and carries on.

People often forget that the boom times and the Celtic Tiger of the 1980s and 1990s did not reach all communities, especially in the North of England and Ireland and Scotland and it is good to see that remembered in this book.

1973. In a small fishing community on the west coast of Ireland a baby boy is washed ashore in a barrel. Named Brendan and adopted by local fisherman Ambrose Bonnar, over the next two decades he’ll change the lives, ordinary lives made extraordinary, of not just Ambrose’s family, wife Christine and two year old son Declan, but the whole community.
So many things I loved about this strange, lyrical book.
The way the narrative is told by a communal voice - a bit like a Greek chorus.
The witty asides about events in the lives of characters from local families.
The changing relationships between the Bonnar family and friends.
A highlight for me was the beautiful moment in the book where Ambrose and Christine trace their relationship through each other’s scars, as well as some of the passages set at sea, where fishing is becoming evermore industrialized.
The Boy from the Sea is a captivating, unforgettable debut novel.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Picador for an ARC

The Boy from the Sea is a novel that is set in Ireland in the 1970s. It opens prophetically with the arrival of a single baby boy, cast adrift and alone. The baby washes up ashore in a makeshift style float much to the interest and shock of the whole town of Killybegs on Ireland’s west coast in the county of Donegal. The story then follows the life and direction of this child as he grows up and navigates his sense of belonging and self. Brendan, as the child comes to be known, is adopted by a local family, the Bonnars, Ambrose and Christine who already have a young son Declan. The Bonnars are a working-class family with Ambrose himself a local fisherman and Christine, a cleaner at a hotel. In the beginning they enjoy relative monetary success: Ambrose is a skilled fisherman who can read the oceans and knows instinctively where the biggest shoals will arise. However, during the course of the novel and with the passage of time, the industry experiences a complete overhaul, and boats are replaced by high tech giants that track fish using computers and hunt them in unprecedented numbers.
The progression of time is a done effectively in this novel and Carr deftly takes the reader through the family’s ups and downs, both their joys and their sorrows. These are also entwined and juxtaposed with highs and lows of the town of Killybegs inhabitants as well as society as a whole. We periodically read about named individuals who have experienced some life changing event, perhaps they have gone to hospital or a child of someone else has ended up in prison, another individual who has gone through financial hardship another who ran away. This feels again to be a commentary on not just the passage of time but also how we all, despite our close proximity, lead separate lives and have our own trials in life that we must face.
Declan’s and Brendan’s relationship is a key point of focus and the brother’s animosity grows over time fuelled by jealousy and resentment. This division is on occasion fed or enforced by Christine’s sister Phyllis who lives next to the Bonnar’s and has taken responsibility for the care of her and Christine’s elderly and infirm father, a role that provokes its own levels of resentment and longing. Despite the hardships many of the characters face, a sense of community prevails within the novel. Not least through the use of free indirect discourse used by the author. The narrator takes on almost a collective voice of the town’s inhabitants, beginning sentences with ‘we knew’ or ‘we always thought’ in this way the reader is drawn into conversations and speculations about central characters in a way that is both gossipy and intimate.
The Boy from the Sea is such a beautiful book that encompasses ideas about time, community and relationships. The characters are fully realised and poignantly portrayed; a beautiful exploration of humanity and connection.

The Boy From The Sea is a story about identity and family within a tight-knit Irish community.

This is a tale that is pervaded with a sense of magical realism for much of the book... A young baby is discovered within a box believed to have been pushed in by the tide. The child takes on a sense of mysticism and folklore as the locals continually question who he is.

The boy ( to be named Brendan) is taken under the wings of the Bonnar family led by a fisherman named Ambrose- he and his wife Christine already have a young child named Declan.

Much of the story focuses on the hardships of the fishing community in the the 1970s and the 1980s and how the family struggle to survive despite dreams and aspirations; the neighbouring influence of Christine's father and sister who do not approve of the 'cuckoo in the nest' and the fragile and fragmented relationship between Declan and Brendan- jealousy and difference.

As Brendan grows older he starts to lead a solitary existence wandering around the local area but is soon regarded as having some ethereal quality as locals believe he can help the infirm ..

This is a story with a sense of underlying melancholy but there is a definite feel that Brendan is different - but how ...and is all that it seems or can people desperate for hope create illusions ?

Garrett Carr has written a gentle yet moving story- the narrative often told from the perspective of the village observing the Bonnar family. The friction between the two brothers is what makes this great reading - acceptance, denial, betrayal and hidden love as well as the sense of 'claustrophobia' in a small seaside community that needs hope.

A beautiful and moving story

This is a thoughtful, slow, character driven story that certainly makes you think. Not my normal type of genre but it kept my interest to the end.

Quite a different genre / book for me, but I did enjoy it. Set in Ireland, it is based around a baby boy found on a beach and the family that adopted him. They live in a tight fishing community and the story is set in the 1970's and 1980's. I would just say that for me, I didn't feel a lot happened but that is just my opinion.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review, which is what I have given.

2.5 stars

This is Garrett's adult debut and I haven't read any of his children's books or non-fiction books.

It is a difficult book to read, in my opinion. It's very much a literary piece, very serious, very meaningful. You have to work a lot harder, see below the surface to get any enjoyment out of it.

And even though I had read the synopsis, I really wasn't sure exactly what was going on. It was all a bit bitty - we had a child, and then we were looking at someone's childhood, and then about superstition and I just got lost.

It was okay. I had to stop reading it and go back to it. It was hard work and whilst that's fine for other people, I don't like my reading to be hard work, life is hard work enough, I want reading to be fun. I don't mind a hard-hitting literary piece but I don't want to struggle to get entertainment out of it. I can see why people liked it and felt something from it, I appreciate it's an interesting story, but I just didn't get on with it. Maybe it's just not the way of writing that I'm suited to.

Wow. Thank you so much to Picador for the access to an ARC of The Boy From The Sea. This book was simply stunning. I found myself waking up at 5am because I was desperate to read more before my day started.

This is an outstanding piece of literature. The prose is powerful in its simplicity, reflecting the setting and people of the story. The characters were all fully realised and three dimensional with peaks, troughs, triumphs and foibles.

What really sang was the Greek chorus like narrator. It leant so much heart and atmosphere to the story and anchored you in the town and the Bonnars’ place in it. The illustration of time passing was one of my favourite aspects of the book.

I can’t wait until this is published so I can buy it for everyone. It’s a brilliant book with wide appeal, great pacing and incredibly heart.