Category: HF Reading Challenge

Book Review – Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

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About the Book

Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.

When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Haunting and timeless, this is the story of a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.

Format: Hardback (176 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 17th July 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

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My Review

Seascraper, winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize 2026, is a book that simply oozes atmosphere. Although set in the early 1960s, it has a timeless quality.

Twenty-year old Thomas scrapes for shrimps in the same way his grandfather did before him, painstakingly with horse and cart, often with little to show for it at the end of a session. It’s tough, grimy, soul-destroying work. We get the gritty details of his life: the ingrown toenails, the reek of sweat, fish guts and horse dung, the salt-encrusted clothing. But there are lovely touches too such as Thomas’s tender care for his horse.

Thomas’s days are governed by the rhythm of the tides and by the weather. He navigates the potentially treacherous, shifting sands by a combination of instinct and memory. Most other shankers have switched to motor rigs but Thomas hasn’t the funds to buy one even if he wanted to. Instead by necessity he remains ‘steadfast to the old ways’.

A sense of being trapped permeates the novel.Thomas’s mother gave birth to him out of wedlock and has been ostracised by the community as a result, albeit unfairly. Her life is one of unending domestic chores with only the odd night out providing fleeting opportunities for company. Thomas harbours ambitions to be a folk musician but lacks the confidence even to tell his mother that he owns a guitar, let alone to perform in public. Instead he keeps his guitar hidden away in the stable, practising in secret.

Then, out of nowhere, the possibility of a different future appears in the shape of Edgar Acheson, a Hollywood movie director with a dream of his own, namely to restore his reputation by directing a film adaptation of a cherished rather otherwordly book. He believes that Thomas’s stretch of beach is the perfect location. ‘It’s sort of funny… I feel I’ve got the strongest sense of what this beach could give the picture. There’s a mood out here – it’s absolutely right. I mean it’s like I’ve been out here before.’

He offers what to Thomas is a life-changing sum of money if he will take him out on the beach. Edgar’s exuberance overcomes any misgivings Thomas may have; he knows what dangers lie out there. It turns out he’s right to have been wary because what he experiences that night is an uncanny combination of distorted version of reality and wish fulfillment. Eventually illusions are shattered but there’s also a tantalising glimpse of the possibility of a different future.

I’m not quite sure how the author managed to capture so much in so few pages but he did, brilliantly. Seascraper has a quiet intensity that is completely mesmerising and is fully deserving of all the plaudits it has received.

In three words: Atmospheric, immersive, poignant
Try something similar: Clear by Carys Davies

About the Author

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.

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Book Review – Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby @novelcarolyn @northodoxpress

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About the Book

In 18th century Whitehaven, Kit Ravenglass grows up in a house of secrets. A shameful mystery surrounds his mother’s death, and his formidable, newly rich father is gambling everything on shipping ventures. Kit takes solace in his beloved sister Fliss, and her sumptuous silks, although he knows better than to reveal his delight in feminine fashion. As the family’s debts mount, Kit’s father turns to the transatlantic slave trade – a ruthless and bloody traffic to which more than a fortune might be lost.

At a private Naval Academy, Kit is jolted into unruly boyhood and scandal before his first taste of life at sea. Adventures will see him turn fugitive and begin living as ‘Stella,’ before being swept into the heady violence of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion. Driven by love, revenge and a desire to live truly and freely, Kit must find a way to survive these turbulent times – and to unravel the tragic secrets of the Ravenglass family.

Format: Paperback (448 pages) Publisher: Northodox Press
Publication date: 25th September 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

It was only as I was planning my trip tomorrow to see Carolyn Kirby interview fellow author Andrew Taylor at Oxford Literary Festival (event details here) that I realised I’d never published my review of this wonderful book, one of my favourite historical novels of last year.

From his earliest years, Kit has felt uncomfortable in male attire and found pleasure in wearing his sister’s clothing. He even invents a female persona for himself, whom he christens Stella. It is something he knows will inevitably bring him into conflict with his father. ‘For more than anything, my father wanted me to be manly. And so it was my fate to always let him down.’

The opening section of the book is set in Whitehaven, a port on the north-west coast of England. It’s a ‘wind blasted’ town where the presence of the sea constantly assails the senses. There’s the ‘the crack of sailcloth, the creaking of hulls and the disquieting growls of the shipmen’, the taste of salt on the tongue and the odour of the harbour, a ‘rumbling, pulsing shit-slopping belly’. The town’s fortunes rest on trade, with ships coming and going carrying coal and other cargo. Sadly it’s also reliant on the increasingly lucrative slave trade with Kit’s father being a leading share-holder of the Resolve, a slave ship.

The author immerses the reader in daily life in 18th century Whitehaven, introducing us to archaic industries such as the milling of snuff. I particularly loved the description of the Lammas Day fair where activities include boxing bouts, races and a cockerel eating competition (yes, really). ‘Prentices and servant-girls, all in their best holland coats and camlet petticoats, crowd around peddlers of trinket-toys and ribbands.‘ Unfortunately events take a darker turn with Kit an unwilling witness to an example of everything he abhors about being a man.

Determined to purge his son of his ‘unmanly’ tendencies, Kit is sent to sea by his father where he experiences the rigours of life on board a ship where, on the lower decks, ‘nothing is odourless’, including the old seaman he is expected to share a hammock with. Completely against his nature, Kit finds himself having to demonstrate ‘manliness’, whether that’s uttering oaths, entertaining the crew with bawdy, bloodthirsty songs or climbing the mast in a storm. It typifies Kit’s struggle between what is expected of him as a man and what he instinctively feels to be his true identity.

Following a series of tragic events, Kit takes to the road dressed as a woman, resurrecting Stella. What follows is a series of adventures that have a picaresque quality, involving encounters with a multitude of colourful characters. For example, millinery shop owner Mrs McMemeny, complete with green velvet eye patch. Kit’s travels take him to Carlisle, Edinburgh and beyond, often buffeted by external events such as the Jacobite Revolution. And sometimes Kit discovers he’s got people completely wrong.

As well as being a thrilling adventure story, Ravenglass explores themes of sexuality and identity. Events often turn on items of clothing: a sulphur-yellow quilted petticoat, an embroidered silk waistcoat. And a person’s true sex is often revealed through bodily functions: menstruation or lack of menstruation, the way you pass urine, the inconvenient growth of hair.

A small niggle is that I would have liked more detail about Kit’s later years but aside from that I loved everything about Ravenglass. It’s a historical romp with a wonderfully engaging central character and authentic detail. A great example of accomplished storytelling.

In three words: Sweeping, immersive, spirited
Try something similar: The Romantic by William Boyd

About the Author

Carolyn Kirby’s debut novel The Conviction of Cora Burns was chosen for awards by the Historical Writers Association and by the Specsavers/Crimefest debut crime fiction prize. Carolyn’s second novel When We Fall was one of The Times’ top 20 historical novels of 2020. Originally from the northeast of England, Carolyn studied history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and she is now on the organising committee for the annual St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend.

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When We Fall