Seascraper, Benjamin Wood
Seascraper, Benjamin Wood
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Seascraper

Author: Benjamin Wood

Narrator: Benjamin Wood

Unabridged: 5 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/04/2025


Synopsis

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, this “cinematically plotted...radiant” (The New York Times) novel follows shanker Thomas Flett as his quiet life in a small English coastal town is forever changed over the course of one fateful day.

Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream.

Then a mysterious American arrives in town, and enlists Thomas’s help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, soon Thomas starts to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Haunting and timeless, from “one of the finest British novelists of his generation” (The Times) Seascraper tells the story of a quiet existence upturned over the span of one day, and a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.

About Benjamin Wood

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. Seascraper is his fifth novel. His previous works have been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Union Prize for Literature. In 2014, he won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac. He is a senior lecturer in creative writing at King’s College, London, and lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Meike on November 05, 2025

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 This is such a moody, beautifully atmospheric book about a young man on the verge of adulthood, living with his 36-year-old mother and working as a shanker, a trade he learned from his grandfather. His name is Thomas Flett, he hasn't seen much of the world outside......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on September 19, 2025

To say this is atmospheric is an understatement as I was immersed in the fog and the chill on the beach where 20 year old Thomas Flett scrapes the sea for shrimp making a meager living providing support for himself and his mother . It’s a sad, lonely, hard working existence in Northern England in sp......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on September 15, 2025

Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize And in keeping with the prize’s longlisting of a group of relatively unheralded English based male authors (Markovits, Miller, Buckley) and of rather quiet novels (add “Love Forms”) - based both in my own views (confirmed on a re-read) and general reader reaction......more

Goodreads review by Karen on September 24, 2025

I thought this novella was simply… brilliant! The atmosphere from the Irish Sea… the cold and damp, the fog, the tide… it’s as if I was right there with the lonely young man Thomas Fett ..as he was on the beach with his horse catching shrimp. It’s as if the atmosphere were itself a character. Though th......more

Goodreads review by Stephen the Bookworm on September 28, 2025

If you've ever lived by the sea -especially in the winter- when the days are grey, damp and full of an engulfing mist, then the scene is set in Seascraper in atmosphere and climate.. Now Booker Longlist 2025 nominated .. Thomas Flett works as a shanker- he drags a net through the sandy wet coastline c......more


Quotes

"Author Benjamin Wood narrates his atmospheric story of a quiet life on the tidal flats of North West England. Over the course of three foggy days, listeners hear the softly sung lullaby of Thomas Flett, an impoverished boy who harbors musical ambitions while practicing the obsolete art of shanking—trawling for shrimp using a horse-drawn cart. Thomas’ luck seems about to change when a schmoozy, fast-talking American film director shows up in town, tantalizing him with a life spent making art. As the ghosts of his grandfather, whose business he inherited, and his unknown father surface, Wood pensively voices Thomas’ fears, dreams, and songs. A haunting homage to a forgotten art performed by its author."