| October 6th 2026“Seascraper” by Benjamin Wood Four intrepid members braved the atrocious weather to drive to the meeting and one joined us on -line. The reviewer began the meeting by telling us a bit about the author. Wood is the author of 5 novels including this one, which was published in 2025 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is a senior lecturer in Creative writing at King’s College, London. When writing this book, noisy building work in the next-door house caused Wood to seek refuge in a memorial garden He ended up writing the whole book in longhand in a notebook. He had a golf umbrella and waterproof trousers to enable him to carry on writing in the rain. The coastal town of Longferry, the setting for the book, is based on Southport where Wood grew up. The novel follows Thomas Flett a young man earning his living by going out in his horse drawn cart to catch shrimps in the mudflats of the estuary. He has a glimpse of a different life when he meets Edgar who enlists his help in finding a setting for a film he is making. This turns out to be a doomed venture. It also nearly ends in disaster when Flett is sucked into the sinking sands. Edgar rescues him but while he was semi-conscious Flett had a dream, or hallucination, during which he sings a duet with his late father, a man he never actually met. They sing a song called “Seascraper”. The experience is life changing. Next day Flett remembers the song and sings it to Joan, a girl he is in love with. The end of the book suggests that he will have some success with his folk singing and also get closer to Joan. Maybe he won’t have to be a seascraper for the rest of his life as he feared. Most people enjoyed the book although some felt the pace was slow at the beginning. We decided this might have been deliberate to show the monotony of life as a seascraper. We talked quite about the dream section. Some thought it difficult to decide which was real and which Flett’s imagination – especially as, at first, the dream was about Flett being rescued by another seascraper which was consistent with his being trapped by the sinking sand. The setting of the book was very atmospheric – especially the section about going out on the mudflats and the fog coming down. None of us had previously thought of Southport as a foggy place. Perhaps it only happens further out towards the river channel. Flett lives with his mother who had him when she was fifteen. We thought she was portrayed as much older than mid-thirties. Perhaps this was to emphasise what a hard life she had, facing the stigma of being weighed down by poverty. Both Thomas and his mother were trapped by their situation. |
