The start of this story had so much promise. A baby mysteriously appears in a small fishing village—where did he come from?

Instead of a mystery, we get a lengthy family drama that is more depressing than dramatic.

There are some beautifully poetic parts, but it took me a long time to finish and didn't really hold my attention.

I wanted to love it, but it fell flat for me.

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of #theboyfromthesea

I really wanted to like this, but this was not my cup of tea. Set in the 1970s in a seaside town in Ireland, this book starts when a baby washes up on the shore. Ambrose Bonnar decides to adopt the baby and name him Brendan, and we follow Ambrose's family as Brendan grows up, Ambrose's son Declan copes poorly with Brendan's existence, Ambrose tries to make a living as a commercial fisherman, and Ambrose's wife tries to make ends meet and mend her relationship with her father and sister.

The premise of this book was promising and seemed ripe for a lot of interesting family dynamics, but the emotional depth just didn't really materialize. The book spent a lot of time on the fishing aspects and the culture of the town, which could have worked but didn't for me. I didn't like the omniscient narrator of the townspeople, and the characters all kind of felt flat. It was also just a slow, meditative book, but the writing didn't pull me in enough to make it feel worth it. It will likely appeal to others, but it wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

Tender, spellbinding, and startlingly beautiful.

"Any fresh baby represented possibility but here was one with no parents, no history, a child who was entirely future."

In 1973, an insular, small fishing community in County Donegal, on Ireland's west coast, is in an uproar when one of their own finds a baby boy in a barrel on the beach. Dubbed "the boy from the sea", the child is is taken in and named Brendan by a local fisherman, Ambrose Bonnar, and his wife Christine. The pair swiftly adopts Brendan, much to the dismay of their young son Declan.

The choice to have the collective voice of the entire town narrate the story of the Bonnar family is absolutely mesmerizing, providing the reader with a tender, intimate portrayal of a close-knit community. Spanning twenty years, the novel is filled with the most startlingly beautiful, lyrical prose, bringing to life the often harsh conditions and stark lives of fishermen both on land and at sea.

Detailing the ordinariness of its protagonists' lives following an extraordinary decision, "The Boy from the Sea" is a spellbinding, exhilarating, profound and deeply moving examination of the family we come from and the one we make.

"These parents knew you can never tell how a child will turn out, naturally yours or not. They had learned, 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."

While the author Garrett Carr has previously published three young adult books as well as one non-fiction work, "The Boy from the Sea" is his first novel. An incredible debut by an immensely talented Irish voice in fiction.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf and NetGalley for the copy in exchange for my honest review.

"The Boy from the Sea" was published on May 13, 2025, and is available now.

A charming, slow character study of a fishing community from the 1970s onwards, The Boy From the Sea is a delightful read, which explores the family and community dynamics after a baby is found washed ashore. What I particularly enjoyed about The Boy From the Sea was that it was spoken from the point of view of the wider community. I appreciated this wider community's voice in watching families and their changing relationships alongside the changing fortunes of a community based around fishing during that period. It felt true to a smaller, tight-knit community that it felt this book was set within.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr is a poignant coming-of-age story that was utterly compelling.
I was hooked from the beginning!!
It was amazing and engaging.
I was instantly sucked in by the atmosphere and writing style.

This is a quiet novel, collectively narrated by the people of a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland . The focus is on a young family who adopt a baby boy found by the sea and how this decision impacts them over the years. It’s about this family trying to make a living, about their many times troubled relationships - between father and sons, between spouses, between brothers, and in the extended family between sisters , between fathers and daughters. It’s about their everyday lives with the good and the heartbreaking aspects of it.

There are characters outside of this family including the collective narrators, the villagers who became for me anonymous characters. In snippets throughout the novel they provide almost like a newspaper column, the weather, events, and details about some of the villagers as well as telling the story of this family. I loved the format. I loved the way we get to know this family . It’s also one of those stories, where the sense of place, this village by the sea is so integral to the story, you might even say it’s a character. A well written novel that takes us on a journey of this family from heartbreak to hope.

I received a copy of this book from Knopf through NetGalley

Set in a small fishing village in Ireland in the 1970s-80s, a baby floats ashore in a barrel. A fisherman and his wife take the baby in and adopt him as their own. Their young son resents the new baby, a poison that festers as the boys grow up. The townspeople are fascinated with 'the boy from the sea', as they call him, and some believe him to have magical powers. The story follows the family through the years, culminating in a heartbreaking tragedy. Narrated by a collective 'we', it makes the reader feel as if we are observers looking in from the outside. This is a beautifully written family drama, and I could not put it down.

There is something about Irish stories and Irish writers that always hit my heart, and <i><b>The boy from the sea </i></b> was no exception.

The Boy from the Sea it’s a beautifully written novel happening on a quiet Irish Village, where a baby boy washes up on the shore.
The story is narrated by one of the townspeople, and follows the boy’s adoptive family and their community as modernization changes their traditional way of life. While slow paced, Carr’s lyrical prose gives us a vivid image of the characters and their life, creating a character driven story that will resonate with literary fiction readers.

This was a great debut and I’ll be waiting to read more by Garrett Carr.

<i>I would like to thank Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review</i>

Funny thing how kindness skips a generation. Declan, the titular "Boy"'s older sibling, wouldn't know kindness if it fucked him. The elder Bonnar couple love their magical gift of a child..."Parents knew you can never tell how a child will turn out, naturally yours or not. They had learned, 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"...Brendan, named for the Navigator, that famously fostered child. The boy, like mythical Brendan, never has his own place to take root...thanks, Declan...but instead becomes a source of bemusement in the community.

The narrative is from a godlike omniscient third-person PoV...the godlike, or royal, "we." It's a choice that, while conferring the reader with the advantage of being privy to things a more limited PoV would make awkward to show, removes us from the action. Observing from a distance is always going to slow one down when reading about the intimate life of a community. It did here. There are so many small, mean-souled people in Brendan's world. It doesn't relent, either, when we see his "family"...mother Christine's horrifying sister and father, and unwilling sibling Declan...being so unreservedly awful to him. As though being abandoned in a Moses-like way was somehow his fault, or merited (like any infant deserves abandonment).

So quite a melancholy read for me. As I've come to expect from Irish writers, or the ones who get published in the US anyway, the prose has real lyricism. Unexpectedly it breaks into quotidian musings on things like the EU and its fishing quotas..."He still felt guilty about his comportment with Christine later, as he sat in his car outside the fisheries office. He’d never actually apologize but he’d be extra jovial in their next few encounters; this was how we indicated we were sorry for something we’d said or done: by acting oddly the next time we met you"...and the waning control of the church on peoples' inner lives..."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"...and eldercare..."Eunan {Christine's ghastly father} was against anything without set purpose and complete predictability and a human tended to fail on these requirements. He was against surprises, he hadn’t allowed a telephone in the house for many years as you never knew when it might ring on you. 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."

What you're getting in this story is not showy, or fast, or loud. It is just like the sea that dominates this Western Irish town. It is quiet and inner-directed, with wild outbursts of damage and trouble, followed by the calmer gift-giving phase again. It is a lovely, involving visit to a lifeway long since altered by the relentlessness of change grown from within anf imposed from without.

I very much enjoyed the story's two-decade time frame. They were the last years of an Ireland now so completely vanished that one would be hard pressed to see it in modern Ireland. An elegy, albeit an emotionally honest one, to the way the country once was, with characters standing in for ways old and new. A read I expect will launch the writer into world notice because it is so plangently plucking heartstrings all the way through.

I don't mean that as a diss, only a recognition. I'm hip to your tricks, Author Carr, and I see how well you're performing them. That earns you a respectful tip-of-the-cap four stars.

A slow-paced tale of a small fishing village in the west of Ireland, centered around a family that adopts a baby boy who mysteriously shows up one day, as if he’s washed up from the sea. Gorgeous prose and very interesting communal POV, but a very slow plot. This is a great book for dipping in and out of, so that you can really savor the beautiful language. I expected more mystery around where the baby came from than we got though!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

3.5⭐️ This was a beautifully written story.

It took me a bit to get into this one; the pace is pretty slow (slow enough to take me out of the story at times), and the writing style took some getting used to. However, I did enjoy the lyrical writing, and the longer I read, the more I got into it.

I liked the format of how this story was told. We get to see the Bonnar family through the eyes of its members, and also people in town. The characters were distinct, and there were both likable and unlikable characters (here’s looking at you Phyllis). Brendan especially was such an interesting character. I felt bad for him in that he didn’t quite feel like he belonged, as well as his rivalry with his brother. The small town setting was an interesting backdrop for this kind of story, and how the scenery was described was cozy.

This was definitely a more character driven novel with a slow pace, but I think it’s a good book for someone in the mood for that kind of story.

The story of a fishing family living in 1970s and beyond in Ireland. The book looks at how one decision changes a family. I liked that the reader also got the point of view of the people living in the small town the family called home. This along with cultural information about Ireland really rounded out the story.

DNF - I was very grateful to receive a copy of this book, the summary made it seem amazing. However, it turned out that the writing style, more so the story telling, was not up my alley. This text went into side tangents about subjects that I was not necessarily invested in & therefore the flow felt quite bogged down. I think perhaps I thought the story would explore a different facet of the "boy from the sea" rather than be a domestic reflection on life on the seaside. I digress, this wasn't for me but I know other readers will love it.

I reached about the halfway point of this book before giving up. Here's why:

I expected an emotional story with a strong sense of atmosphere. I didn't get either.

I never got a sense of place. I couldn't picture this village.

We spent an inordinate amount of time learning about fishing boats, about fishing, and about the fishing industry. The “boy” had zero to do with any of this.

Our narrator is a nameless villager who was somehow omniscient, knowing all the thoughts, conversations, and feelings of the people involved. We jumped from one person's thoughts to another and so on, while remaining slightly removed from the emotions of it all. Imagine someone you don't know has observed some drama concerning a bunch of people you also don't know, in a place you know nothing about, and that person sits you down to tell you the story. That's what reading this book felt like.

And finally, those people weren't all that interesting. At the halfway point, virtually nothing of substance had happened.

I was bored and didn't care enough to see if there was a point to the story. But while this one wasn't for me, it might be the perfect book for you.

DNF

*Thanks to Knopf for the free copy!*

Really disliked this book. Could not get into it at all unfortunately. Wish it was more engaging. Disappointed.

THE BOY FROM THE SEA by Garrett Carr ~to be published May 13, 2025

There’s just something about Irish writers…

Our setting is a close-knit fishing village in 1970s Donegal, Ireland. The residents are a hardy, no-nonsense type, they are people who understand the nature of the world but who would never complain or philosophize about it because what’s the point? One morning, like Moses in his basket, the townsfolk find an abandoned baby boy in a fishing barrel that has come in with the tide. The story centers around the family who decide to adopt this boy and their journey raising him along with their biological son.

I often think of family sagas as being sweeping; this one, confined to a single generation, feels intimate and nuanced. Carr explores sibling rivalry, married life, coming of age, caring for elderly parents, and identity amidst larger societal changes in the fishing industry at the time.

It is quite a sad novel in some ways, poignant and bittersweet, but an absolute joy to read. The prose is beautiful. I could see this becoming one of my favorites of the year.

Thank you so much @aaknopf for the gifted arc! This review will be published on IG within the next week or so and I will add a link at that time.

The Boy from the Sea is a beautifully written novel set in the small fishing community of Killybegs, Donegal, Ireland in the 1970s-1990s. When an abandoned baby is found on the beach, Ambrose Bonnar brings the baby (later named Brendan) home to his wife Christine and two-year-old son Declan. The family takes him in, and their lives are profoundly altered. The story examines the complexities of family dynamics and the social changes taking place around them.

It is told in an unusual manner – by the collective townsfolk, which adds depth and perspective. The characters are well crafted and believable. Ambrose is a fisherman with a single boat, struggling to compete against the new larger commercial vessels. Christine worries about making ends meet and helping her sons get along. Declan is immediately jealous of Brendan and the brothers compete for their parents’ (especially their father’s) love. Christine’s sister Phyllis and elderly father Eunan live up the road and are not overly thrilled with the Bonnar family’s decision to adopt Brendan.

Carr nicely captures the nuances of personal interactions. I love how he conveys the differences in the ways the characters see the world. The prose is lyrical and atmospheric in its descriptions of the town and the surrounding land and sea. This story is intentionally slower paced and focused on relationships among the characters and townsfolk (it is not for anyone looking for lots of action). I found it a well-crafted memorable story that kept my interest from beginning to end. I think the ending is particularly poignant, showing how families can evolve over the years. Recommended to fans of family dramas and character-driven stories.

4.5

As a longtime lover of Irish literature, The Boy from the Sea delivered everything I was hoping for and more. I’m always drawn to family dramas, especially when they unfold against the atmospheric backdrop of the Irish coast, and this one pulled me in completely. The story is filled with a memorable cast of characters, each layered and compelling in their own way. I especially appreciated how the novel explores the theme of shame—how it lingers, silences, and drives people to bury the truth. It’s a beautifully written, emotionally resonant book that stayed with me long after I turned the final page.

I was unable to finish this book and thus will not be posting a full review. I did not enjoy the story, unfortunately, and could not continue. Thank you for the opportunity and consideration.

A story set in the fishing village of Killybegs, Donegal in the 1970’s and 80’s.
A baby boy washes up inside a half barrel, just days old and the local’s fall under his spell.
A fisherman and his wife who have a two year old son adopt this baby.
Beautifully written.. a story of family, sibling rivalry, and life in a close-knit fishing community.
The story is told by the local’s.
I really didn’t want this story to end!

It’s the Irish stories and authors that are my favorite!


Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC given for an honest review!