Seascraper
Benjamin Wood’s most recent novel, Seascraper (2025), follows the life of Thomas Flett. His humble existence is quiet and mundane; it follows the rhythm of the tides just as his forefather’s lives did. At twenty, Thomas lives the life of a much older man having stepped into the shoes of his grandfather. The life of a traditional seascraper, who uses a horse drawn cart to scrape the low tide flats for shrimp, is being replaced by the middle of the 20th century, but Thomas and his horse persist. Poverty and solitude punctuate Thomas’s daily life. The little youthfulness he embraces, in the form of self-taught guitar and song, he does in secret. Thomas and his mother exist outside the community of their small village, for reasons unknown until midway through the novel.
Everything changes when a charismatic film director appears one day at Thomas’s house. He opens Thomas’s eyes to life beyond the daily drudgery. Seascraper unravels almost as a dream and despite it taking place all in a few days, Thomas seems to come of age while the reader follows along. Along the way, he faces truths about himself, his parents, and his world, he had never previously considered. The tale quickly morphs beyond the mundane as it seeks to answer questions about what it is to truly live.
Wood’s prose are sparse, raw, and wildly familiar, even when describing a life and setting few readers have likely experienced. His writing brings the Welsh coast to readers the world over. This novel’s setting and characterization are at once simple and wildly complex. If you, like me, find your way to the audiobook, Wood himself reads Seascraper. I walked away from this novel struck by the humanity of its narrative. It is no wonder that Seascraper was long listed for the Booker Prize. What’s more, Wood concludes the novel in song. It is a powerful (and appropriate) way to conclude this haunting novel.
Bibliography:
Wood, Benjamin. Seascraper. Libby ed., Penguin, 2025.
A Great Passage:
”The dark beach spreads into an empty murk beyond the sea wall, and he feels the stragest pull in its direction. He can’t help but wonder what the shrimp are doing tonight, if they’ll be copious as weeds, just begging to be scraped up from the sand, or shy and meagre as they’ve been all season. That’s why Pop would say the biggest catches are the ones you can’t be there to make. The mind will taunt itself by dwelling on the could’ve beens — no good will ever come from those regrets” (156-157).
