The Booker Review

‘Politics – so dull,’ he says. ‘This world’s so full of noise and most of it is pointless.’

And ain’t that the truth. Seascraper is a book which steers away from politics entirely and focuses on the hard worn day-to-day of survival. Although never stated in words, I dated the story to exactly 1962 – the year Lawrence of Arabia was in cinemas – where the action (such as it is) takes place on the beaches of the Northwest of England. A young man named Thomas Flett works his horse among the dunes every morning, catching shrimp to eke out a living for himself and his mother. One day an American film director turns up at his door and it changes his life, for sure, though maybe not exactly how we expect.

As a first impression, the physicality of this book feels classic: compact, black hardback; swathes of small black print; paper slightly ochred, as if aged. It reminds me of an old copy of Tom Sawyer I borrowed from a grandparent once.

I can tell from the start that this is going to be one of those Booker picks that teaches me lots about a single niche subject – like that one a few years ago about the game of squash, Western Lane, which I loved. (Side note: In the alternative universe where I have written a prizewinning novel I always imagine myself in this category, where my specialist subject will be English church bell ringing. 😊) I quickly find myself picking up the immersive vocabulary of shanking,* collecting the catch into whiskets** and clopping through the runnels*** and milgrims**** of the sandy shallows.

*Shrimp-picking       ** traditional woven baskets    *** rivulets of water     ****this word appears to be either made-up or so dialecty that I can’t find any trace of it (!)

In a way this book is all atmospherics. A sense of foreboding follows us out on the fog-stricken sands, where deadly sinkpits lurk and ghostly figures wander. The drenching rain on the beach over the cart and the shivering horse made me feel cold from reading it.

In other ways, the narrative takes us on a scenic tour of a simpler time, of less ‘noise’ and where the focus is on the simple things: a weekly bath, a ‘sarnie’ in a hungry worker’s pocket, the excitement of a shilling to spend at the village bookshop. The language of the dialogue, too, feels cozy and of a time – “ta,” “cheerio” and “ta-ra”, as my Gran would say. It makes one yearn for a different era, before social media and the chatter of modern life. The figure of Thomas’s grandfather, in particular, strikes a chord with his impatience for small talk and his drive for getting on with the task in hand, quietly. And yet I am left wondering at the end if I have just been led to romanticise extreme poverty. Thomas certainly seems to spend a lot of time being cold and wet in the dark at 6am, and isolation swirls around his mother and him, as they quietly beg more credit at the village shop to buy food.

There is something soothingly rounded about the story’s structure, the three sections of 1^st – 2^nd – 1^st low tides, back and forth, Thomas coming back to his roots after learning new things and discovering new possibilities in the ever-upward spiral of life’s journey. While little has changed by the end of the story, we are left feeling that he has grown somehow and is now on a path, the folksong he has written giving him the confidence to take a shot at the future and in some other way, to be at peace with and feel some pride in where he comes from. On the folk song: I’m not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but at the end of the book there’s a URL for a website where you can listen to the song. I sort of loved this, and found myself listening through it on repeat while writing down my thoughts.

Interesting that the whole tale takes place within about 24 hours, reading slightly like A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich with shrimp instead of gulag bread crusts. (And being offered a paying job on a film crew instead of… I don’t know, breaking rocks or whatever.) This does make the feelings and betrayals around his new friend an interesting take, given that they have known each other only a single day. Like a platonic Romeo and Juliet, from zero to life-changing in barely the course of a weekend. Does it seem melodramatic?

Not really. Some people really do change our lives, and it can be the tiniest of things that change our viewpoints on our lives for good.