Q: What was the inspiration for The Boy from the Sea?
A: The Boy from the Sea is about a family who adopt a baby found abandoned on the shore near their home in the north-west of Ireland. Although I never experienced anything quite like that, there’s a lot of my background in the novel. My father was a fisherman and I was raised in the fishing town where the novel is set. We tend not to be very interested in our parents’ histories when we are children and, as he died when I was still young, I missed the chance to ask my father about things that I’d now love to know. Today I am approaching the age my father was when he died, and my sons are closing in on the age I was at the time. Fatherhood, absences and responsibilities were on my mind as I began shaping The Boy from the Sea. I’ve been telling people that Ambrose Bonnar, the fisherman who adopts the baby in the novel, is based on my father, however I must admit that I have a few of Ambrose’s attitudes and mannerisms myself. I will soon embark on trips to promote the novel around England and in the US and my wife asked me: “How long do you think it’ll take for people to notice that you’re Ambrose Bonnar?”
Another part of the drive to write The Boy from the Sea was simply to bear witness to the time and place as it’s one that hasn’t got novelistic treatment before; the fishing communities of Ireland’s north-west. The story takes place over twenty years, the time it takes the boy from the sea to become a young man, but also the time during which the business of fishing went from small scale – 50foot vessels and wooden barrels – to a massive, high-tech industry, in which huge vessels scoop up hundreds of tonnes of fish in a single trip. Such a rapidly changing world was a great way to keep testing Ambrose, his family and their entire community.
Q: The Boy from the Sea is often about men failing to express themselves. Why did you want to write about that?
A: I wanted to put such men in fiction as I wasn’t seeing many of them there. Plus, frankly, I identify with them.
But it's not simply that men in The Boy from the Sea can’t express themselves. I think it’s a different thing: it’s that they don’t self-analysis, they don’t find themselves an interesting subject and therefore don’t have the vocabulary to engage in such chat and little interest in gaining it. Question them on the subject and they’d actually be proud of their lack of self-examination. They’d consider such inwardness a kind of vanity. But I don’t mean to suggest it’s a harmless limitation, it can be very damaging, especially to the people who love them. This is a big element of my novel.
Q: The Boy from the Sea is written in the voice of an Irish fishing town. Why did you decide to narrate the novel in that way? What were you hoping to show?
A: I needed a voice with just a little more emotional intelligence that any of the characters, so a first-person voice was not an option. None of the characters have enough perspective to be able to tell the full story, not even Christine Bonnar. The voice had to be able to analysis and summarise each family member’s drives and the nature of their clashes. The novel is also set in a world that will be new to readers; the fishing families of Ireland’s north-west, and the novel’s voice is aware that some things ought to be explained to the reader – even supplying historical context occasionally. A third person voice could do all that, but there was more: I wanted a voice that could be infused with humour. The novel’s humour emerged from the cadence of a local voice,
one coming from deep in the community, opinionated, proud, judgemental but at the same time concerned and invested. This sense of investment is rooted in the story: Brendan, an abandoned baby fated to be raised in the town does, in a sense, belong to everybody. Or at least that's what they like to think.
Q: What's next? Will you write a novel to follow The Boy from the Sea?
A: I’m writing another novel, also set in Donegal, also about a family. One review described the family in The Boy from the Sea as “dysfunctional”, but I think that’s a bit harsh. The Bonnars have very difficult circumstances are doing their best, most of the time anyway. But the family in my next novel really are dysfunctional. So powerfully dysfunctional that they draw a whole community into their disorder.