BOOKS THAT REMIND YOU WHY YOU READ - SEASCRAPER

I told the woman behind the counter, I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I would know it when I saw it. Mostly, I was looking for older books that might inspire Friendship Book stories, but I wasn't getting into that.

So, she did what any good bookseller should do - she recommended something. I might have walked past it, but she said it was different and, sometimes, that's all it takes to hook me.

I found some "work" books, then I added Seascraper to the pile.

It IS different, but it also fitted a topic I had been covering with the writing group.

Joanne Harris, in a Desert Island Discs interview had said that most of her stories involved a stranger, someone who shakes things up, makes a difference, for better or worse. Sometimes the protagonist is the stranger in a new situation, sometimes the stranger arrives in the main character's life.

It struck me how often that is the case in fiction.

And Seascraper is a perfect example of the trope.

It is also amazingly well researched and written. I don't imagine Benjamin Wood has first-hand knowledge of what it was to be a shrimp-fisherman or a Hollywood producer - but he makes you believe he does. The research that must have gone into this book boggles my brain. It's not a feel-good book, but it's one that will stay with you, and maybe even change a life or two.

On the Stranger theme -

Thomas is a young man with no future. He has a job that will either kill him today, or in the long term. The industry has moved beyond it, but he's loyal and will stick with it as it sinks, despite his ambition to be something else. He hides that ambition from everyone but his old horse.

He lives in a hovel, ostracised from the community, his life shaped by the shame and the losses of the past.

He has nowhere to go.

Then the stranger arrives.

Possibilities are hinted at. A door into a better future cracks open.

As in so many stories, the stranger makes the difference, causes the change.

But, as in so many stories, the stranger doesn't stay, and isn't all he seems to be. How the protagonists deals will all this is what determines whether the change will be a good, bad, or lasting one.

In this instance a parent seems to close a future down, while another parent seems to open one up. But are the parents all they seem, and do Thomas and the stranger have a say in what the previous generation have already decided?

And - because this isn't a book review - that is all I have to say about that.

But, I would ask you think of the books you have read and see how often the stranger plays a part. How often the stranger isn't what they seem. And, maybe, write your own version.

Well-Read Books of Wigtown

Joanne Harris

Benjamin Wood