You don\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
As unexpected as his previous four books \u2013 which range from a campus intrigue (The Bellwether Revivals<\/a>) to a sensitive study of a Glaswegian painter (The Ecliptic<\/a>) \u2013 Seascraper follows the daily trials of Tom Flett, a \u201cshanker\u201d 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\u2019s this that alerts us to his vulnerability to charmers and chancers.<\/p>\n Apprenticed by his pop at 14 (\u201cevery\u00a0other Flett had been a shrimper, going back to his great-grandpa\u201d), Tom\u00a0nevertheless 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 \u201chalf a library\u201d 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.<\/p>\n When the latest suitor turns out to\u00a0be a slick American film director named Edgar Acheson, Tom sees his chance of escape. Edgar is scouting locations for a movie adaptation and immediately looks to recruit Tom as his local guide, \u201ca guy who knows the beach, the tides\u201d. Tom agrees at once, though acutely aware of his antisocial stink of \u201cpervasive sweat and shrimp rot, fish guts, crab flesh, seaweed, dander, forage, gull shit, horse dung\u201d. The two form a fast friendship, with Tom warning his exuberant employer of the treacherous sinkholes that open up on the beach, deep enough to swallow a horse and drag you down after it. It\u2019s this mortal danger that ramps up the tension for the book\u2019s long and surreal central section where Tom and Edgar set out to recce the beach at night.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s harnessing a horse, cooking a fry-up or tuning a guitar, Wood transforms the quotidian into the poetic<\/p>\n What makes Wood\u2019s writing such a\u00a0pleasure is his attentiveness to the prosaic details of everyday life. Whether it\u2019s harnessing a horse, cooking a fry-up or tuning a guitar, he transforms the quotidian into the poetic, making the exactitude of each task sing on the page. The book is full of visceral and evocative descriptions of the natural world, \u201cthe festering scent of bladderwrack \u2026 a strange, spasmodic crunch each time the wheels pass over razor shells and gnarls of driftwood \u2026 undulating sand that gives beneath the wheels as readily as butter\u201d. He\u2019s equally adept at creating warm and believable characters whose deep humanity makes you want to spend time in their company.<\/p>\n Inevitably, Edgar isn\u2019t all he purports to be, leading Tom back to his\u00a0first love, music, as he composes a\u00a0ballad to woo Joan. This precipitates an epiphany about the power of art: \u201cA\u00a0song, though \u2013 well, a song belongs to someone. To whoever dreamed it up.\u201d In this sense, he achieves his dreams without turning his back on tradition, and much of the book is concerned with the tension between long-established ways of living and the insistent klaxon of modernity, embodied by Edgar, along with new technologies and their attendant ills. Early on, Tom notes that there is \u201call sorts in the water now that wasn\u2019t there when he was just a lad. Strange chemicals and pesticides and sewage.\u201d He also observes that \u201cthere\u2019s more profit to be made using motor rigs and shrimping further down the coast\u201d.<\/p>\n While some of the dialogue veers close to folksy, and Edgar is straight from central casting, there\u2019s a clarity\u00a0of observation and lack of sentimentality that raises the book from a simple tale of unfulfilled lives and nostalgia for a vanished past. The short form feels Conradian, lending a\u00a0welcome density and brevity \u2013 apt for a\u00a0protagonist grappling with physical adversity and inner turmoil. Seascraper sees Wood join the ranks of adventurous mid-career British novelists such as Barney Norris and Ben Myers; all three are treading a singular path with unfashionable yet heartfelt accounts of lives that long for a wider horizon.<\/p>\n