Seascraper by Benjamin Wood is a 2025 long-listed Booker novel (really more of a novella) suffused with the gray and misty atmosphere of a British seaside village in the early 1960s, animated by fascinating characters, and enriched by the interiority of the protagonist. Thomas Flett, barely 20 years, lives with his 36-year-old mother, Lillian, in a shabby house not far from the sea where he earns his living gathering shrimp. His father died in the Second World War, and he learned shanking for shrimp and other survival skills starting at age 14 from his deceased grandfather, Pop, with whom he and his mother lived after she got pregnant at the age of 15.
Other shrimpers have newfangled motorized rigs to mechanize the job of gathering tasty crustaceans. That’s not how Pop taught Thomas. Every day, Thomas harnesses his overworked horse to a small wagon and goes to water’s edge where he scrapes the sand for a pail of shrimp to sell at market. Sand pits (sinkpits) threaten his own safety and that of his horse. The work is tedious, far from remunerative, but he knows that following Pop’s rules will enable his mom and him to scrape by. He longs for something better, but his grandfather had drilled into him that “habit’s all you can rely on.”
It’s almost always foggy, raining or about to rain. Thomas goes home at the end of the day stinking from fish, his own sweat, seaweed, and the filth on his clothes from mucking the horse barn. His hands are full of cuts, and his toenails are painfully ingrown. He gets back into the same clothes for several days at a time. Their small house always feels damp.
Thomas dreams of a life beyond, but is stuck, nurtured only by the many books he reads. He has a deep interest in folk music (having secretly sold his grandfather’s watch for an old guitar) and in a young woman in town, but he is too timid to pursue either. His stultified daily routine is interrupted by a newcomer to town, a charismatic, fast-talking American film director who wants to shoot his next project on the isolated beaches so familiar to Thomas. Edgar Acheson is the most interesting person Thomas has ever met. The director’s kinetic exuberance for everything he sees around him, his rejection of conformity, and his exhortation to live life to the fullest make an impact on Thomas. But there is more to learn about Edgar Acheson.
There are plot twists that keep the pages turning. Author Wood is a powerful writer and skilled craftsman. Seascraper will leave the reader with a gentle smile and the gratification that the few hours reading it have been well spent.
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