Seascraper, Benjamin Wood’s fifth novel, depicts two days in the life of Thomas Flett, a young man who earns his living as a shanker – a man who rides a horse and cart up and down the beach netting for shrimp. It is a hard life, and it has taken its toll. At just twenty years of age, Thomas is already as hunched and wizened as a man considerably older. His bones ache, his ingrown toenails give him hell. He shambles along with “all the spryness of a nursing-home resident”. And, though he is more or less accepting of his lot, there is a part of him that yearns for something more, something better. Perhaps one day he’ll have the nerve to go on stage at the local folk club (the time period seems to be the early 1960s), or to ask pretty Joan Wyeth from the Post Office out on a date.
As in Wood’s previous novels, particularly A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (TLS, April 17, 2020) and The Young Accomplice (TLS, August 12, 2022), Seascraper offers a thoughtful and sympathetic depiction of a young life curtailed by a bad start, including missing parents and missed opportunities. The narrative is split into three sections, in line with the rising, falling and rising of the tide.
The story begins as Thomas’s day begins, at five o’clock in the morning. Every day is the same: up with the lark; a “ciggie” and a cup of tea; feed and harness the horse; then out on the sands of Longferry for a couple of hours. A good day will bring in a couple of quid, which Thomas and his mother will eke out for as long as they can. Wood evokes nicely the rich textures of such a working life – the shirt “gone vinegary beneath the armpits”, the morning tea so stewed that it looks like “casserole”. Daily existence is a well-worn routine, and for Thomas it is wearing thin. “It bores him worse than it exhausts him.” His talent and passion are for something else – his guitar.
The monotony is broken by the arrival of Edgar Acheson, an American who claims to be a big-shot Hollywood director scouting locations for his new movie. He wants Thomas to take him out on the beach to look around. He treats him to a steak dinner and gives him a cheque for £100 – more than a year’s wages for Thomas. There is talk of Henry Fonda playing the lead. There might even be a non-speaking role for Thomas. While initially sceptical (“he’s always been suspicious of excitement”), Thomas is soon won over by Edgar. “It’s a bridge he wants – between Longferry and the world beyond – and Mr Acheson could be the one to help him build it.”
Needless to say, it is all too good to be true. The excursion on the beach is a disaster, with the increasingly erratic Edgar lost in the fog and Thomas almost drowned in a “sinkpit”. And while the two men bond, with Thomas impressed by Edgar’s uncompromising artistic vision and ability to strike out on his own, the American’s story and state of mind (that flask he’s constantly sipping from contains something stronger than booze) quickly falls apart.
The novel in general then begins to falter too. There is a slightly silly dream sequence, in which Thomas writes a song with the father he never knew, and a boring encounter with Edgar’s put-upon mother, who turns up to whisk him away and fill in his backstory. The tone, already prone to corniness, becomes increasingly strained, and increasingly emphatic, as the importance of art and of following one’s dreams is stressed. The ending is rather neat.
This is all a shame. Seascraper’s opening pages – so pungent and particular – suggest the possibility of a more singular and unsparing focus, and a novel more nuanced and less mawkish.
Christopher Shrimpton is a writer based in London.
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