Seascraper opens with Thomas Flett rising at five in the morning, eating a cooked breakfast made by his mother and pulling on his oilskins. Thomas is 20, though the ache in his bones makes him feel considerably older – a symptom of the hard physical labour of his job. That job is shanking: dredging the seashore for shrimps at low tide using a horsedrawn cart. Thomas does the same work that his grandfather did decades before him and men from the north-west of England have been doing for 500 years. But his heart is no longer in it: the pay is poor and the work is solitary and dull. He dreams of being a folk singer, playing to audiences in pub backrooms and parlours, and, unbeknown to his mother, has been working on some songs.
Benjamin Wood’s novel, which spans two days, brims with atmosphere and detail; you can practically smell the fish guts and seaweed as Thomas stands on the beach and picks over the morning’s haul. The audiobook is narrated by Wood, whose gentle and evocative delivery underlines Thomas’s hard-bitten existence and his quiet longing for a different future.
