"The Boy from the Sea" by Garrett Carr is the June 2025 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Each month, we will pick a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author and celebrate the amazing ability of the Irish to tell a good story for the IrishCentral Book Club.
Described as both "outrageously funny and incredibly moving," "The Boy from the Sea" is Garrett Carr's debut novel. The Donegal native
You can watch Garrett Carr introduce "The Boy from the Sea" here:
Synopsis of "The Boy from the Sea"
Ireland 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar offers to bring the child into his own family: his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and up the lane, Christine’s sister and aging father. The townspeople remain fascinated by the baby, now named Brendan, as he grows into a strange yet charismatic young man.
"The Boy from the Sea" tells the story of a family and community, all thrown into turmoil by Brendan’s arrival. The family’s fortunes rise and fall over the years—as do the town’s, because nothing happens to one family here that doesn’t happen to them all—as the forces of a voracious global economy and modernized commercial fishing wreak havoc on their way of life. In the village, Brendan and Declan are wildly different and often wildly at odds; out on the sea, Ambrose worries about his children, but cannot afford to tear his attention from the brutal work that keeps his family afloat. As the world around them keeps changing, the mystery of one boy’s origins pulls them all toward a surprising, stormy fate.
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Reviews of "The Boy from the Sea"
“In the difficulty of these characters’ lives is a sense of real connection that gives the book a kind of lightness … This is a surprising, tender and warm-hearted novel about a real place and real people” – The Guardian
"Beautifully observed, funny and poignant. I didn't want it to ever end" – Jennie Godfrey, Sunday Times bestselling author of "The List of Suspicious Things"
“Wry, observant, various and thoughtful, a book that gathers momentum like a westerly, the crash of consequences giving way to a late calm, the reader left with a stunned impression of the storm that just blew over” – The Irish Times
"Carr’s story is both expansive and intimate, funny and warm, while also psychologically acute. And it carries a cargo hold full of feeling beneath the decks. The result is immersive in the best way" – The Herald
"The Boy from the Sea has that rare quality I often find myself searching for in a novel – narrative intimacy among the vastness of life. Garrett Carr is meticulous and precise in his writing – the skilled invisibility of a true craftsman. This book is fully alive, and enlivens the reader" – Rónán Hession, author of "Ghost Mountain"
“Carr’s chorus is a charming and sometimes humorous voice … which poignantly paints the struggles of marriage, caregiving, grief and financial worry” – Financial Times
“A novel that is warm, full of lightly worn wisdom and wit. It is a joy" – Sunday Times
About Garrett Carr
Garrett Carr, a native of Co Donegal, teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, and he is a frequent contributor to The Guardian and The Irish Times. His non-fiction "The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border" was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. "The Boy from the Sea" is his debut novel.
(*Synopsis, reviews, and biographical information courtesy of Penguin Random House.)
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