Seascraper

Seascraper is powerful, poignant and poetic. I can’t recommend it enough

Benjamin Myers, award-winning author of Cuddy

It is a sensuous treat, this novel. So much care has been given to every detail – of shrimps and sea mists and sinkpits, of work and music. A language of the sea washes over every page

Ross Raisin, award-winning author of God's Own Country

I loved this hugely atmospheric story and its tender portrait of quiet Thomas Flett, a young man who secretly longs to make music, but whose dreams and prospects are constrained by his hard life, local community, upbringing and background. Then a passing American gives him – and us – a brief glimpse into what it means to aspire for something more. Haunting and beautiful, this is a very special novel indeed.

Sarah Easter Collins, author of Things Don't Break on Their Own

Benjamin Wood is a singular voice. Intense, original, unforgettable

Kelly Mullen

A quiet, unassuming book about honest work and modest dreams, about sons and their duty, and those brief, wonderful moments when we glimpse the possibility of living a different life. Benjamin Wood is a magnificent writer and I intend to read everything he has written

Douglas Stuart

Wood is up there with the very best... he packs more poetry into his opening paragraph than many a Booker-winner achieves in their entire oeuvre

Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times

Seascraper shimmers, salt-flecked and rippling. It swells with tense, memorable moments... poignant, authentic and hopeful.

Spectator

One of the finest British novelists of his generation

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Times

a wrong-footing and enormously compelling coming-of-age narrative

Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

Benjamin Wood has been quietly building a reputation for intricate yet impressively distinct novels, and Seascraper might be the most fully formed yet…What Wood does brilliantly here is grapple with the push and pull of family duty, work, upbringing and the possibility of an entirely different life’ Ben East, Observer

Ben East, Observer

Can only add to Wood’s reputation as one of Britain’s most engaging contemporary novelists…Wood’s fifth novel is an extraordinary evocation of the liminal world caught between land and sea

Michael Cronin, Irish Times

The wonder of this book is how Wood delivers so much in a few words…Seascraper reads like the forging of a new myth: one about how an alternative life is possible, and may even be starting to happen inside you already

John Self, Financial Times

We bang on about Benjamin Wood almost as much as we do about Nathan Hill, so it's good that the Booker judges share our love for him. His fifth novel is quieter and stiller than his others, but just as good. It's about a young man who catches shrimp for a living, but has a hidden desire he hardly dares to think about in case it fails. And it comes with a free song. In two words: Short. Brilliant

John Self, The Times

In Benjamin Wood's quiet but immensely atmospheric Seascraper, a young man plies his grandfather's trade of 'shanking', scraping the seashore for shrimp in an England that is moving on without him. Muted but precise prose burrows into his hopes and dreams for a tale that resonates far beyond the telling

Justine Jordan, Guardian

Wood conjures wonders from this unlikely material in a tale so richly atmospheric you can almost taste the tang of brine and inhale the sea fog

Jude Cook, Guardian

A huge talent

Hilary Mantel

Britain's answer to Donna Tartt... a talent to treasure

Sunday Times

What a writer

Richard Osman

Wood deserves to be far better known

Irish Times

A seriously talented writer

Financial Times

A beautiful writer

Andrew O'Hagan

Every detail, every scene, fits intricately together in a story about all the big things and all the everyday things: love, ambition, the past’s hold on the future…Seascraper reads like the forging of a new myth: one about how an alternative life is possible, and may even be starting to happen inside you already.

John Self

As in much of Wood’s writing to date, his use of language in this latest novel is compelling in its lyrical discipline – exact, never ostentatious. Seascraper can only add to his reputation as one of Britain’s most engaging contemporary novelists.

Irish Times