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HereOur Rating 3⭐s
In 1973 on the west coast of Ireland, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Who is he? Where is he from?
Ambrose a local fisherman, is far more interested in who he will become and – with a curious community looking on – takes the baby home and adopts him. But for Declan, the baby’s new brother, this arrival is surely bad news. Rivalries can be decades in the making . . .
Set over twenty years, The Boy from the Sea is about a restless boy trying to find his place, in a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.
The Boy From The Sea (TBFTS) tells the story of Brendan a new born baby washed ashore in half barrel to the shores of the West of Ireland. Taken under the wing of the village as something akin to a spiritual gift from the Sea Gods. He swiftly ends up being ensconced in the Bonnar household with kindly, hardworking dad Ambrose, caring and nuturing mum Christine and jealous as hell older natural born brother Declan.
We follow their adventures over the following decades through the trauma of Christine's fathers illness, the self sacrifice of her sister Phyllis, the ups and downs of the fishing industry and the slow depressing grind of Donegal catching up with the late 20th century and all that it brings. The main relationships feel like a battle. Always fighting repression, resentment and economic erosion. Will the adoptive brothers ever treat each other with love? Will Phyllis and Christine come to terms with the roles that they have slipped into? Will his family ever give Ambrose the peace he is looking for? The questions are well set but the answers, if they are answered at all, aren't what we desire.
The enduring after taste is one of sadness and depression. It took an unexpected left turn when of the main characters dies, and not just dies but dies off screen, so to speak. We only get to hear about it via a letter from a family member, which just felt odd. There doesn't seem to be a resolution to any of the conflicts raised between the family members, The plot doesn't feel like a plot, more just an unending soap opera with an Irish setting . It's ending just sort of drifts and doesn't actually end. Is there a message? if there is it must be that life is an awful grind so be prepared.
This wasn't my cup of tea, it took me almost a month to get through. This is probably down to my foibles and subjectivity although on the plus side I have discovered though that
family saga novels may not be for me. I have no doubt that anyone who enjoys this genre may well give this 5 stars instead of the 3 stars that I gave it.
That's not to say this novel is without merit. On the contrary the author does an excellent job of evoking the West of Ireland in the 70s and 80s. Laced through out the narrative are occasions of Irish charm and and whimsy but overall it left me feeling a little bit sad.
The tide brought the child in,’ he said, ‘he was laid in a barrel.’ Attempts were made to get sense out of him. ‘Who’s he belonging to?’ asked Justine O’Donnell. ‘He’s a gift from the sea,’
this was before contraception so things were simpler, so simple some of us went a year or two unsure if we were technically virgins or not.
By making it clear he wanted to impress her, Ambrose had handed Christine the role of being hard to impress, and therefore put her in command. She decided to keep hold of this position.
fundamentally, every child comes 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.
When Ambrose was young, shortage still looked like it did in history books: poor people had no electricity, no bank account, no teeth, but they didn’t have debt either; they lived outside money, in inherited cottages and supported by relatives and the community. But those people were gone, everyone had money now, just not enough. Shortage had become pernicious and harder to recognize. It crept into your brain and gave you no peace, keeping you at every moment aware of your home’s easy crushability. And it was almost impossible to talk about. Many families were this way, but you still felt alone with it, so alone.
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