Garrett will be introduced by Louise Kennedy, before a short reading.

1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland’s west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan by Ambrose Bonnar, the fisherman who adopts him, the baby captivates the town and the boy he grows to be will captivate them still – no one can quite fathom Brendan Bonnar.

For Christine, Ambrose’s wife, Brendan brings both love and worry. For Declan, their son, his new brother’s arrival is the start of a life-long rivalry. And though Ambrose brings Brendan into his home out of love, it is a decision that will fracture his family and force this man – more comfortable at sea than on land – to try to understand himself and those he cares for.

Told over two decades, Garrett Carr's The Boy from the Sea is a novel about a restless boy trying to find his place in the world and a family fighting to hold itself together. It is a story of ordinary lives made extraordinary, a drama about a community who can’t help but look to the boy from the sea for answers as they face the storm of a rapidly changing world.

Compulsive reading. Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment. – Louise Kennedy

A novel of heart-bumping power and sparkling vividness, this book evokes the seethe and surge of an island nation's sea fables while being suspicious of sentiment, often wittily so. This is a strange, beautiful, truly compelling triumph, a story about a very specific place that somehow comes to seem an everywhere and a people who feel familiar as faces in mirrors. A breathtaking achievement. - Joseph O'Connor

The Boy from the Sea is an utterly engrossing read. Atmospheric and incredibly moving, I was captivated by the trials and triumphs of the Bonnars. A bittersweet ballad of a novel, I'll be thinking about for a very long time. - Jan Carson

Garrett Carr 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.

The Boy from the Sea, by Garrett Carr - Book Launch