Picador snaps up Carr’s The Boy From the Sea in 24-hour pre-empt

Picador has snapped up Garrett Carr’s The Boy From the Sea in a 24-hour pre-empt.

Publishing director Sophie Jonathan acquired UK and Commonwealth print, digital and audiobook rights from Irene Baldoni at Georgina Capel Associates, and Picador will publish the book as their lead literary debut of spring 2025. It has also been pre-empted in the US by Reagan Arthur at Knopf.

The Boy From the Sea is a story of a family, a fishing-town community and a child. The synopsis says: "It’s 1973; a baby is found on the beach of a close-knit town on Ireland’s west coast. The baby fascinates the community and the boy he becomes will fascinate them too – no one can quite fathom Brendan Bonnar. That’s the name given to him by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts the baby." 

The book’s synopsis adds: "Over the years it charts the rises and falls in the Bonnars’ and the town’s fortunes, as the global economy and the EU fisheries flex their muscles. The world is changing and this corner of Donegal must move with it."

Jonathan said: "The Boy From the Sea is a staggering piece of storytelling: an exquisite, hilariously funny and perfectly pitched novel about a town pulling back against relentless modernisation and a restless boy trying to find his place in the world. The humour here is delivered with such love, and it is when they are in danger, physical or emotional, that you realise how much you have come to adore the characters in Carr’s novel.

"The communal voice that Garrett has created is like nothing I’ve read before and The Boy From the Sea deserves to win prizes and admirers across the world."

Carr teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, and has published three YA novels with Simon & Schuster. His book The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border (Faber) was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and The Boy From the Sea is his debut novel for adults.

The author added: "A lot of me and my background went into this novel so I am delighted to have found a publisher who gets it completely. The Boy From the Sea has its roots among the fishing families of Ireland’s Atlantic coast and, working with the team at Picador, I look forward to introducing this world to readers."

Baldoni commented: "I read the incipit of this novel at the end of the first lockdown and for the next three years I just kept thinking about it. This is such a touching, acute, no-nonsense feat of fiction. Garrett has created the perfect balance where form and content work in unison, and he makes it look easy. At GCA we can’t wait to pitch this wonderful book to foreign publishers at Frankfurt Book fair in a few weeks’ time."