Dec 2, 2025
I can’t stand to be in houses with no books in them, can you?
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
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I can’t stand to be in houses with no books in them, can you?
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
It’s so strange, when you read a book and you can picture all the places in it so completely, even though they’re built from someone else’s life and you’re just like a tourist in the writer’s scenery, you know –’
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
Well, that’s a very easy thing to say when you’re so young. Life has a way of undermining all your principles as you get older.
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
Some people are so righteous in their minds they can’t accept mistakes in others. They would rather cradle condemnation at their breasts than help someone in trouble. He can’t understand that kind of bitterness at all.
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
You don’t realise that most of what’ll happen to you is because of other people’s choices. There’s a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape.
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)
I feel kind of uncultured for not loving this book. It was long listed for the Booker Prize, and the reviews are effusive. It was certainly an interesting topic. It was a story of a life totally unknown to me. It was very well described. I just found it a bit slow at times. It was short anyway.
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
I really liked the beginning, but slowly and without anything really changing, I lost interest in the story, partly because it veers a little towards the dreamlike and a little towards the grotesque, and even though it was a good book in the end, I was still disappointed. I'm not sure what I expected or what I would have liked to be different, but Thomas definitely remains teetering on the brink of a miracle that never happens.
L'inizio mi era piaciuto tantissimo, ma lentamente e senza che cambi veramente nulla, ho perso un po' d'interesse per la storia, anche perché un po' gira verso l'onirico un po' verso il grottesco, e anche se alla fine é stato un bel libro la delusione é rimasta. Non so bene cosa mi aspettavo o cosa avrei voluto di diverso, ma sicuramente Thomas rimane un po' in bilico sul precipizio di un miracolo che poi non avviene.
you had to stay alive to opportunities in life
He can’t help but grin, though he’s not sure at what. There’s now a cool, soft, effervescent feeling in his blood, a sense of possibility that’s spreading from his heart down... He’s always been suspicious of excitement–nothing he anticipates is ever worth the wait or turns out quite the same as he expects–but still, it’s coursing through him like a medicine. If it’s true that better luck will come to you through patience and determination, he’s not felt the benefits of that approach so far. But Pop would often tell him how you had to stay alive to opportunities in life, to never fail to notice when they tap you on the shoulder–and it seems he’s being tapped.
— Benjamin Wood, Seascraper: A Novel (Scribner, September 23, 2025)