The infant Brendan was abandoned in a barrel and eventually adopted by a young family. Ambrose is a fisherman, married to Christine. They have a two year old son Declan, who never adjusts to being usurped as the baby of the family. The title of the book, and the blurb, make It appear that Brendan is more central to the story than he is. The story is told by an unnamed townsman, there are no first person accounts, and everyone in the family is given equal weight.

This is a gentle, mostly uneventful, family drama. It deals with the hardships of a fisherman’s life, sibling rivalry, coming of age, financial difficulties, and aging parents. Brendan does have some unusual habits for a child that make him stand out in the town. The book paints a portrait of the family, the entire town and a way of life. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator had an Irish accent that was completely comprehensible. My thanks to whoever chose him.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This was a step back in time to a different era. Ireland in the 1970s, with a gentle humor and wit. The setting of a fishing village gave an insight into the lives of fishermen as they adjusted to the EU quotas. There is a toughness to the people depicted. Loved this one.

This is a charmer. A beguiling, unpredictable, sometimes a little heavily shaded but nonetheless compelling story of life in a small fishing village, an abandoned baby and the community all around. There’s a lovely wit at work when the third-person-plural narrative voice takes over, but elsewhere this story of siblings (two sisters, later two brothers not linked by blood) is a dark, evocative, softly spoken tale of parents and allegiances, obligations and destinies. I liked the ordinariness of everyone, the authenticity of the fishing environment, even the desultory-ness of some episodes that led nowhere.
All in all, a fresh and warmly written piece of work. I look forward to more from Carr.

"Our town wasn't just a town. It was a logic and a fate."

A baby boy found washed ashore in a barrel is adopted by a local fisherman and his wife.

Is his arrival a blessing or a curse?

This excellent family drama set in Ireland would make great book club fodder.

If you need a little still life about a small Irish coastal fishing town in the 80s, look no further.

I lately love a good family character study- and this one checked all the boxes. The story follows a family who unexpectedly take in a little boy who is found abandoned and is duly titled 'the boy from the sea". This book shows the impact that it had on the biological son of that family (Declan), and how it impacted his relationships with his father and mother. We see the boy from the sea grow up and how the expectations we set on people, especially children can really shape them.

Lovely debut and will be looking out for more of Carr's books!

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for my ARC and also physical book!

I don’t agree with any of the negative comments I’ve read about “The Boy From the Sea.” Some commented they found it a slow read, but I found it easy to read and finished it under a day. I found its complex familial relationships interesting and believable from all of the different characters’ points of view. I especially liked that the narrator spoke from the perspective of the town folk where the story occurs; this is a rare and unique voice.

One reviewer says the story is filled with magical realism, but I don’t see any validity in this assessment. On the contrary, I think it’s strongly rooted in realism. The only magical aspect may be at the start, when a man claims to have found a baby floating in a barrel in a cove — giving the book its title. However, most in town believed the baby was left sitting on the rocks on the shore by an unwed mother who fled — nothing magical there!

Having recently read Thomas Dolby’s “Prevailing Wind” and being overwhelmed with its nautical references, this book was a refreshing relief from being bombarded with nautical detail. There is just the right amount to give a perspective but not enough to overwhelm or detract from the story. I am grateful for the chance to read an advanced reader’s copy of “The Boy From the Sea” given to me by NetGalley, Knopf, and author Garrett Carr. My review is voluntary.

Never an End for the Sea

Found adrift at sea in a barrel, a baby boy is rescued and embraced by the people of a small coastal village in Donegal. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar immediately bonds with the infant and pushes for adoption. Christine, his wife, accepts her husband’s wishes, but their son, Declan, resents his new sibling, Brendan, as an unwelcome intruder.

“The Boy from the Sea” is told by the collective voice of the villagers, in a Greek chorus style. We see the effect Brendan has on both the town and the family that has taken him in.

Brendan's distant nature, heightened by his mysterious background, sets him apart. While the locals are reticent to embrace miracles, they hold a deep reverence for the ocean's mystique. Drawn to him, people seek his guidance and blessings. He never claims special powers, instead he listens confidentially to people, never commenting, and then responding with the simplest of blessings. Most villagers adopt the mindset that "it couldn't hurt."

“There’s some around town who believe the boy’s special, on account of the way he first appeared… People like to tell Brendan what’s troubling them… and from what I hear, he may give them a blessing of some sort...”

In addition to Brendan, the heart of the book lies in the fishing village itself. Ambrose loves both the sea and his ship, the Christine Dawn. His life and the town's prosperity hinge on fishing, a way of life naturally expected to pass to his sons. Declan, who has staunchly rejected Brendan, seeks his father’s attention by working alongside him on board.

Phyllis, Christine's sister, has consistently questioned the family's decision to adopt Brendan. Her resentment stems from her role as caretaker for her father, Eunan, who suffers from advanced dementia. Additionally, she frequently asks Christine for money. This is another sibling rivalry, although not nearly as all-consuming as Declan’s and Brendan’s.

The pacing is leisurely as the village informs us how they are coping with the world’s changes. The central focus is on Ambrose’s business struggles and the brothers’ deteriorating relationship as they grow. Then, as in real life, tragedy strikes, and their world turns upside down. This is where author Garrett Carr shows us the life choices our characters will make.

An exceptional debut novel, "Boy from the Sea," provides a rare portrayal of a tight-knit Irish fishing community. Last year’s outstanding “Coast Road” covered a similar setting, but with a much different emphasis. Both books, however, touch upon the struggles of timeworn communities to keep pace with a changing world.

This is a place well worth visiting.

"There's never an end for the sea." ~ Samuel Beckett

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor– and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheBoyfromtheSea #NetGalley

First published in Great Britain in 2025; published by Knopf on May 13, 2025

A great joy of reading is the opportunity to imagine ways of living that are unlike our own. The Boy from the Sea is a character-driven family drama. The family lives in Donegal during the 1980s. Males in Donegal are expected to fit into a stereotype of working-class men who are stoic and silent, who hold their thoughts and problems close, and who avoid calling attention to themselves. They obey cultural norms that, with some subtlety, govern their responses to social situations.

The men have no idea how to communicate with their wives and children and are afraid that any meaningful attempt to do so will be seen as a kind of weakness or failure. The female characters admire their men and keep a sharp eye on their children to be sure they follow the model their fathers have established. The need to "fit in" and for their children to do so is uppermost in the adult characters' minds.

Ambrose Bonnar is a fisherman, as are most of the men in Donegal. He is respected in the community because he knows his place, keeps his head down, and follows the social rules. His best friend is a fisherman named Thomas. Ambrose is married to Christine and they have a son named Declan. Christine has a sister named Phyllis; their aging and declining father is Eunan. Phyllis made a less fortunate match than Christine and comes to depend on her sister for financial assistance. That dynamic contributes to the drama.

For a time, Ambrose fishes with Thomas; they drag a net fastened to both their boats and split the catch. They make decent money by Donegal standards but times are changing. “No one yet admitted it but the North Atlantic cod fishery was collapsing and there’d soon be next to none.” They resent the ability of other Europeans to fish in their waters but resent even more the restrictions imposed by governments to curtail overfishing.

The partnership ends when Thomas buys a larger and faster boat. Ambrose would like to do the same but learns that Christine has failed to make some mortgage payments because she knows their community’s bank won’t foreclose. The bank might not foreclose but it won’t lend more money to a family with delinquent payments. Ambrose can’t compete with bigger trawlers and fears it is only a matter of time before he will need to stop fishing and join his brothers in England, where other Irish men have fled to find jobs as laborers for pay that isn’t available in Ireland. Ambrose doesn't want to become “the person you had to become to be the kind of person who goes to England,” a change in personality akin to “giving up the drink or finding God.”

The story opens with a local man’s discovery of a baby, floating into the bay in a barrel that has been cut in half and lined with tinfoil. Some Donegal residents suspect that the man actually found the baby on the beach, but his story of wading into the bay to retrieve the barrel is more colorful.

After being passed from family to family for a short time, Ambrose and Christine decide to raise the baby as their own. That decision will spark jealousy from Declan, who doesn’t want to share his father’s attention with a boy who doesn’t share the same blood. Ambrose and Christine name the boy Brendan. Brendan’s true origin becomes a source of gossipy drama near the story’s end.

The boy from the sea becomes a local legend. As he grows, he gives simple blessings to town residents, saying things like “Hopefully things will work out for you.” Not much of a blessing, perhaps, but one that is appreciated by people who value restraint, who mistrust promises and overstatements.

The story offers a few eventful moments (too few to spoil by discussing them here), but The Boy from the Sea is probably not a good choice for readers who are only interested in plot-driven fiction. The novel’s value lies in its depiction of Donegal and its residents. The story is narrated in the third person by an observer using the term “we,” but context suggests that the narrative voice is that of Donegal. It is the collective voice of lifelong inhabitants who share the same perspective on how life should be lived. The community is open to forgiveness of those who stray from its core values, but only when the time seems right. “Life was a sort of procession and we all marched in it together, you had to keep up.”

More precisely, the story seems to be narrated by the men of Donegal. “Donegal men had strikingly big key fobs, we tended to have many padlocks in our lives.” When Ambrose decides that Declan is grown and doesn’t need him anymore, the narrative chorus deems this “a grim way to think and we would’ve told him that had we been the types to meddle.” The men distinguish themselves from the “alternative lifestylers” with shaggy hair and sandals who come from Europe to enjoy the sea. To the men of Donegal, the sea is their life, something to be respected. They have little tolerance for leisure or for those who have time to enjoy their lives.

Garrett Carr paints a sharply focused picture of Donegal residents as people who know their place in the social order, who are intent on not troubling others. When Eunan had a stroke, he was aware of what was happening “but said nothing as he hadn’t wanted to make a show of himself.” If they complain at all, they turn their complaints to the weather or other topics that will not spark controversy. They know their lot in life is to bear whatever misfortune comes their way and they are proud of their ability to do so without complaint.

The women are similar but, in private, are more likely to give voice to feelings of resentment. When Phyllis and Christine watch a documentary about the likely aftermath of nuclear war, they agree that Donegal is too unimportant to be bombed. “Yes, it’ll be nuclear winter for us,” said Phyllis bitterly, “we’ll be expected to put up with it.”

In a beautiful scene, Ambrose and Christine reconnect after Ambrose is nearly lost at sea in the novel’s most harrowing moment. As they explore each other’s bodies, they remind each other about the source of their scars: fishhooks and rope burns for Ambrose, kitchen knives and rescuing Brendan from a barbed wire fence for Christine. Carr collapses lifetimes into those scars. The concept of two lovers reminding themselves of all they have done by revisiting their scars is striking.

Carr’s prose is fluid and strong; his characterizations are insightful. Declan would like to be a chef but he comes to accept that being a fisherman is his destiny. Brendan, having his roots in the sea rather than Donegal, is the character most likely to chase a dream, but it isn’t clear until the novel’s end that Brendan has one.

The ending doesn’t definitively resolve the mystery of Brendan’s origin but it offers a likely answer. It also suggests that fates to which we have reconciled ourselves might be changed if we have the courage not to be governed by expectations. These are powerful themes. As a debut novel, The Boy from the Sea establishes Carr as a writer who merits an audience.

RECOMMENDED

I enjoyed the vibe of this book, but it was a little too slow for my liking. While heartfelt, it also moved too slow to be really hooked by the plot.

This book was an interesting look at the tight knit community of a small town and how everyone interacts with each other. I really liked the point of view of the book, which didn't feel like a specific member of the community but rather felt like the community as a whole.

This book is definitely not for anyone who requires a lot of plot. It was definitely more character-driven, and it was the descriptions and setting that stood out to me the most. It felt almost like a folklore or a story that was passed down to me rather than a fiction book that I picked up.

Garrett Carr’s The Boy from the Sea is a is a beautifully crafted novel that blends historical fiction with deep psychological insight. Set in a small Irish fishing town in 1973, the story begins with the mysterious arrival of a newborn baby in a barrel on the shore. The child, later named Brendan, is adopted by a fisherman, Ambrose, and his wife, Christine, setting off a chain of events that deeply affect their family and the community.

Carr’s writing is atmospheric and immersive, capturing both the rugged beauty of the Irish coast and the emotional complexities of family life. The novel explores themes of identity, sibling rivalry, and the weight of expectations, particularly as Brendan grows up believing he might have a prophetic role in the town. The relationships between the characters—especially the tensions between Brendan and his older brother, Declan—are nuanced and compelling, making for a deeply engaging read.

With rich prose and a keen eye for human dynamics, The Boy from the Sea is a poignant exploration of belonging and the ties that bind us. If you enjoy literary fiction that delves into family and community, this novel is well worth your time.

3.5. A slow roll with a lot of town personality. Love an Irish story, and I liked it told by the town.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

I enjoyed the story telling and the story teller, but found this to be a pretty depressing book. Perhaps the author was trying to give us a good picture of life in Ireland in the 1970s and 80s, but I would have preferred a different resolution to the story. Of course the author is telling the story they wish to tell. The family dynamics seemed realistic, just not the type of book I was expecting.

I gave this novel 5 stars.
Have you ever had a "book hangover" while you are still reading said book? It took me longer to finish this book because I did not want it to end. It felt as if it was written 100 years ago. A literary, calming, broody story about a fishing community.

The novel starts with Brendan's arrival in Killybegs and ends with his departure from Killybegs. In between, we learn of the ups and downs of the Bonnar family, from Ambrose and Christine and their relationship with their sons, and the tensions between those sons, Declan and Brendan. We also witness Christine's relationship with her sister and elderly father. In the background, the members of the community serve as a "Greek chorus" describing life in Killybegs and talking about and commenting on the Bonnars and the other residents of Killybegs, from everyday events like the weather to illness and deaths; from the livelihood of the fishermen and the changing economic situation's impact on the various members of the community, some for better, most for worse. It's a slow-moving tale, a snapshot of this corner of Ireland from 1970s and 1980s, with many beautifully descriptive details. Throughout, we see how Brendan's arrival affects his family and the community at large. The novel ends somewhat abruptly, leaving me curious about the future of the Bonnar family.

What a gorgeous book. I seem to really gravitate towards Irish authors, and this story was no exception. Garrett Carr so effectively wove such a complex home life amongst the central cast, and managed to give each character a unique set of troubles and experiences. The relationship between the parents, the relationship between the siblings, the tension between the generations of the family, and the dynamic between the family and the town (an anonymous townie seeming to be the voice of the narrator throughout the story) were all so detailed and believable—explaining the web diagram of the Boy from the Sea would take an hour, at least.

Thank you to Knopf for bringing this story to me, and for giving me a physical copy to annotate and carry around. <3

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr is a beautiful and captivating debut novel. Set on Ireland’s west coast in the 1970s and 80s, this book was an absolute joy to read.

In 1973, a baby boy is discovered on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. Local fishermen Ambrose Bonnar and his wife Christine take in the baby, they name him Brendan and raise him as a younger brother to their young son, Declan. The community are fascinated by the mysterious baby that has appeared on their shore, whereas Christine’s family remain suspicious.

The Boy from the Sea was a wonderful read. I loved Carr’s writing and found myself mesmerised by his poetic words. Thank-you NetGalley and Knopf for this copy.

I really enjoyed The Boy from the Sea. The audio was great too.
It was a great character novel, following a boy and his family as he grows up. I loved the description of the sea and fishing as a profession.

Garrett Carr’s The Boy from the Sea starts out like a mystery but morphs into a quiet, touching, and, like the sea, sometimes dramatic story of a fisherman’s family in Killybegs, County Donegal, on the southwest coast of Ireland.

As the story opens, a villager finds a half-barrel washed ashore with a small baby inside, the infant who becomes known as “the boy from the sea.” Who is this child? Did he wash ashore as the lone finder tells others, or might he have a different origin? Might he even be a gift from the sea, a spiritual being with special powers? As the rumor mill activates, the infant soon becomes younger brother of Declan, two-year-old son of Ambrose and Christine Bonnars. Named Brendan, the boy from the sea couldn’t be more different from his jealous older brother, a fact that becomes increasingly clear as the boys grow from infant and toddler to boyhood, adolescence, and young manhood.

Spanning the years from the early 1970s through the 1980s, the novel not only focuses on the boys’ differing personalities and temperaments but also on the economic challenges facing Killybeg’s fisherman as they grapple with changing times. Can they continue to make a living from the sea? Will they be forced to leave Killybegs, County Donegal, or even Ireland for financial survival?

The powers of nature, changing technology and laws, friendship and rivalries, parent-child relations complicated by economic necessity, sibling jealousies, and the need to find one’s place in life all play important roles in the book. Readers will come to know not only the Bonnars family but also their extended family members, fellow fishermen, the men who sit on the wall, those who hang out in the pub, and “the alternate lifestyles”—a group of young hippie-type outsiders who have taken up residence.

Carr’s ending is a bit abrupt and left me hoping for a sequel, especially to follow Brendan--the “boy from the sea”-- into the future. In a sense, however, the ending as written left me surprisingly hopeful.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an advance reader egalley of this highly recommended new novel from Garrett Carr..

This book wasn’t for me. I didn’t like the dialogue or the characters. The pacing is slow and draggy. The synopsis was more interesting than the actual book. I don’t think there was anything I liked about it, Very boring and repetitive.