The Sea

Discovering John Banville last year was an amazing occurrence. n  The Blue Guitarn was one of my favourite reads of 2015 and has become one of my favourite novels. Period.

So I was both excited and apprehensive to read the Sea, Banville’s Man Booker prize winner, because I feared being disappointed.

I’m relieved to say that I LOVE JOHN BANVILLE! So much. Unequivocally.

His writing beguiles me. His writing consumes me. His descriptions and metaphors are works of art. His way with words, the turn of phrases are surprising and oh, so wonderful! I’m awed. I’m mesmerised.

Every phrase is polished, sometimes to a blinding glare, and it hits you and you’re left wondering - how does he do that!?!

Fair or not, Banville has become the yardstick against which I'll measure literary fiction. As far as I’m concerned, Banville should be studied. Because he’s unique, and surprising, and a wordsmith.

I retract everything I’ve been saying about not being a fan of the first person narrative. Had I read Banville sooner, I wouldn’t have made such a preposterous statement.

n  The Sean is a character driven novel. The narrator is Max Marden, a dilettante in his fifties. Following the death of his wife, Anna, the mother of his only child, Claire, Max is unable to move on. He’s dazed and mostly lives in the past. A certain summer of his childhood, when he met the Graces, is remembered in great detail. He remembers the smells, the tastes and the feelings of those times, in the little town by the sea. Banville weaves his way between the present and the past in a seamless way. Current and past happenings intermingle. The mind wanders and certain memories and feelings resurface. How the mind wonders, even at the most concentrated of occasions."

Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.

As in the n  Blue Guitarn, Banville’s way of describing people, especially people the narrator loves, made me go - Oh, no, you didn’t just say that! You see, Banville doesn’t wax lyrically about one's beauty the way we’re used to reading. His descriptions of people are like no other writers'.
Take Claire for instance, Max’s daughter. “What age is she now, twenty something. I’m not sure. She is very bright, quite the bluestocking. Not beautiful, however, I admitted that to myself long ago. I cannot pretend this is not a disappointment, for I had hoped that she would be another Anna. She is too tall and stark, her rusty hair is coarse and untameable and stand out around her freckled face in an unbecoming manner, and when she smiles she shows her upper gums, glistening and whitely pink. With those spindly legs and big bum, that hair, the long neck especially … Yet she is brave and makes the best of herself and of the world. She has the rueful, grimly humorous, clomping way to her that is common to so many ungainly girls. … Dear Claire, my sweet girl.” See what I mean?

Max isn’t any kinder with his own description. How about this extraordinarily accurate, I thought, spot on description of one getting startled by his/her own reflection? “There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I’m startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head.” And there’s much more of that.

This novel is, to a great extent, about grief. About dying and loneliness. Because "perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”

There is so much to say and analyse about this novel.

There are better, more eloquent reviews out there.

I am just a mere mortal who is completely and utterly spellbound by John Banville’s writing.

Again, I take a bow.

2.5*

Winner of the Booker Prize 2005

After his wife dies, Max moves back to the seaside town where he used to spend his summer holidays as a child. This trip becomes the perfect opportunity to remember his past and rummage through the traumatic events of his childhood, which marked his life.

I had mixed feelings about this novel. The plot is nothing new but the writing is special. Unfortunately, too much so that it felt unnatural and overwritten. It gave me the impression that the novel was written with the thesaurus opened permanently for consultation. Many readers thought the writing was exquisite while for me, it was a distraction. I had serious problems following the phrase to its conclusion and when I reached the end of the paragraph I sometimes had no idea what I was reading about, was it the present, the past, what character the author was writing about etc. Bear in mind I am writing this while I am slowly savouring Proust, the champion of sinuous phrases. It somehow does not bother me there. Yes, I need to re-read phrases, sometimes in two languages, but oh, the joy when everything makes sense. I did not feel the need to make much of an effort here, as the writing did not speak to me. Oh, the plot was also uninteresting for the most part.

I recommend this novel to people who love long, complex descriptions, who do not shy away from using the dictionary and who ravel in darkness of the soul.

n  The Sean - All that water, perhaps, that inexorable slow flood, or perhaps, that relentless ambulatory constant, is one that consumes time, more like dedimentionizes time, if that's a word, provides a cathartic shoulder, and stands remorselessly tall as if symbolizing an indifferent eternity. It cries within like a whimpering child as if it is made purely of emotions, and it roars in insurmountable outrage at the shore which is in a constant tussle to bind it. But it also retreats like a capricious child and sometimes shimmers like a model posing for a portrait. Not only in the photographs, but also in our lives it acts as a backdrop, tailoring a distinct bookmark for each of our memories. Or so it happened with Max Morden and his implacable past that beat in him like a second heart.

The story here really doesn't make an impact because that's not where we are allowed to focus even for one second in this marvelous little book. For, when we are in the mind of a character and sifting through his memories anachronistically, we only see the still images speaking to us from various corners. For example, An old empty eatery by the sea with sun rays slashing through an open window as if trying to brighten the somber air and a gush of wind pushing a stray piece of paper across the floor for someone to pick up and make a conversation. Or a bright sunny day on the beach when a child lying on sand looking at the idiosyncrasies of a family who came out for a picnic, a stern-disinterested father reclining listlessly on a chair, a pair of little twins going about their own adventures, a provocatively beautiful mother/wife looking for something to catch her fancy, and an enigmatic figure of a young nanny sitting with her knees to her chest and hands wrapped around, looking far into nothingness.

Such are the images I am left with after putting this book down. There were times when I read about one of Max's memories and somehow time traveled to one of mines finding myself lost in it and having read a few pages of which I had no recollection. I found answers to certain questions in the form of crude revelations as if I always knew them but never thought of them in such a pristine manner. For example: Max's dying wife:

n  'You are not even allowed to hate me a little, any more, like you used to'. She looked out at the trees a while and then turned back to me again and smiled again and patted my hand. 'Don't look so worried,' she said. 'I hated you, too, a little. We were human beings, after all.' By then the past tense was the only one she cared to employ.n

Doesn't it sound like a perfect manifestation of love towards each other? And when Max tries to explain how his identity was defined through his wife in a relative way like a rose is red only for the eyes that sees it, or like if a tree falls in a forest, the sound is heard only by the dwellers and no one else.

He also made me realize that memory is quite precarious, it gains its strength only by retelling or reminiscing. It also has an element of fantasy with the actual which makes it a little iffy because it vanishes or amends itself whilst encountering the reality again. But most of all, it most assuredly has a character of its own, like a person living in our heads.

This day when I find myself indulged so completely in my memories and how similarly or differently I look at them as compared to Max, I realize the multitudes of spaces, dimensions, emotions, and time that we are capable of traversing and transcending. It is truly overwhelming.

If I were John Banville, I'd be tremendously proud to find my masterpiece resting a mere two million places below Fifty Shades of Shite in the Goodreads rankings.

#arrived

John Banville won the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for this novel, and what a well-deserved honour and tribute for this masterfully written, poignant and deeply moving story.

I read somewhere that John Banville is considered “a writer’s writer”. I can definitely see that. On the other hand, he is also “a reader’s writer” because I am a reader, and thousands of other readers have also enjoyed Mr. Banville’s writing.

This is Max Morden’s story and he narrates throughout. Seamlessly, we follow him along as he talks about boyhood summers somewhere on the South coast of Ireland. He refers to a nearby town as Ballymore and the summer spot as a nearby village, . . . let’s call it Ballyless. In the present, he is in mourning and having a difficult time dealing with his grief. He drinks too much, ignores his work, and is intent on seeking some answers, or something he can hang onto, from his past summers when he was young.

We meet the Grace family: Carlo, Connie, their children Chloe and Myles, and their minder or perhaps governess, Rose. This family is perceived by Max as his social superiors but he is drawn to them for many reasons – partly curiosity, partly out of loneliness, and somewhat out of boredom. The Graces fascinate him, especially noticeable while he relates his experiences with them as a boy. However, with all the time that has passed between then and now, their once large summer home has become a boarding house, and he seeks it out to stay in and perhaps looks to his past to help him heal.

As Max relates his story, moving back and forth between then and now, it is clear that his past influenced his future, and that his ‘now’ is also very much influencing how he views his past. He argues with himself, chastising himself at times for not being clear about a point. Sometimes he will make the point again – the same point using different words. Sometimes he corrects his course in the narrative with an addition that makes it clearer. Sometimes he says he is digressing too far or embellishing, so scratch that, and this is how it was. Of course, once it is stated, it’s not easy (nor is it prudent) to forget it and buy in completely to the new perspective.

This is not a long book, although it definitely is not one to attempt to rush through. The author sets the pace, takes control of this story, and doesn’t let it go for a moment. I was a very willing passenger on this journey with Max and there were times that something he said startled my own past memories into my reading experience. Countless times I had to set the book down and indulge in my own personal reveries. In most respects they weren’t connected to the story except by a small filament of invisible thread, yet once the thread was pulled into my sight, I had no choice but to follow it.

Oh! And the words. I wanted to mention the words – some of them I had to jot down because I might need them some day: for a game (like when you have a whole slew of vowels – etiolate could be most helpful), or maybe just because certain words add clarity to what might be a more watery picture without them. This novel is a masterpiece of words used exactly as they should be precisely when they need to be.

I had several quotes highlighted that I especially savoured, and then I changed my mind about adding them to my review. Please, please read this exceptional novel and discover them for yourself. Of one thing I am certain: each person will come away with their own reveries, their own captured words, and the phrases and sentences that moved them the most.

I recommend this to everyone who has ever danced with words and/or read a wonderful story composed of them, and a reminder that this is a slow waltz . . . one that you will always remember.

I actually put this book in the same category as James Frey's "Million Little Pieces": so bad, it was enjoyable to read. But of course this was bad in entirely more ambitious, pretentious ways than Frey could ever achieve. It's been about two years since I read this, so forgive my lack of specificity, but I'll try to pin down some examples of appalling devices that both rankled and tickled me.

-Balliteration: Banville, perhaps due to his over fondness for the first letter of his last name (as others have been shown to feel, in psychology studies), found it wise to buffet us with a bounty of bubbly, bouncy balloonish words beginning with "b" to give us a sense of what, I'm still not sure.

-What was it called again? A device. Numerous times, Banville shows a sudden amnesia for common objects, which comes off as implausible after he has put so much attention showing off his knowledge. An example was his not knowing a common tree: a pine, was it? And what is that tool we use to record our thoughts? A pen?

-Which leads very well in to my next observation: I had the distinct sense Banville wrote this with a thesaurus in one hand and his cock in the other (I apologize to younger readers of this review). Am I merely hurt that I had to look up so many words I'd never heard of before? No. What shocked me was that, when I looked up all four definitions of one word, not one of them made sense in the context in which it was used, and it was not a term that could possibly be used as a symbol or metaphor, due to the specific nature of the word. Unfortunately, I forget which it was, but for a while, Frank and I did have a game of testing our memory of the various words Banville used.

-His choice to leave all identifiable plot to the last twenty pages, so that . . . we could see he was capable of telling a story? So the book ended on a high note of grief? So that the book of loose ends is tied up and made whole? I've read too many books in which the plot occurs in the last chapter to be amazed or blown away or impressed by the conclusion. In the end, it's a mere device to produce tension when it couldn't be created in a more honest fashion (because of course the protagonist already knows all the secrets that are kept from the reader).

What was most surprising was that, when I picked up "Christine Falls," which Banville felt it necessary to publish under the name Benjamin Black dare his reputation as a serious writer be tarnished, I discovered he could in fact write properly and engagingly without the above devices. Does that point to my having more common tastes? I trust my intelligence enough to say that this discovery merely points to the fact that Banville has lost sight of what "impressive writing" is.

But for whatever it's worth, it was fun to mark up the margins of this book. Bravo?

Listen, this guy either has immense vocabularic prowess or he uses the Thesaurus a lot, either way his prose is stunning and chock full of words that will have you scrambling for a dictionary. Consider:

Chloe was engrossed in picking at the stipples of a ruby cicatrice just below her elbow where the previous day a thorn had scratched her. I examined the fern-wound on my ankle, an angry pink groove between translucent deckle edges of whitish skin; it had not bled but in the deeps of the groove a clear ichor glinted.

Ruby cicatrice? Really? Banville makes what should have been an ugly scar sound like a rare, marvelous flower that blooms once in a decade or something.

Don't get me wrong, I am normally an unashamedly great fan of purple prose, but even I have to draw the line somewhere and I am extremely dubious of Banville's descriptions. (Come on, I'm sure this guy would have our poor protagonist mistake Mrs Grace's sweat for champagne if the editors weren't meticulous enough.)

Ah but the follies of the heart often cannot be accounted for, and I still fell for this pompous, poetic and extremely purple prose. I admit to being partial in my opinions of this book, as I share both a love for Samuel Beckett and the sea with John Banville so I see him as a writer after my own heart.

I was also extremely charmed by his musings on age, the corrosive nature of memory, grief and death - themes I often find myself pondering upon.

What's more, my copy of The Sea had a picture in the end of Banville childishly trying to balance the book on his head, while gazing downwards, off-camera. And this, folks, sealed the deal. Banville is adorable, his writing marvelous and he will probably go down in history as belonging to the same literary tradition as that of Woolf, Joyce and Beckett.

Όταν ένα βιβλίο καταφέρνει να κάμψει κάθε δυνατότητα αντίστασης στην εσωτερική, ατομική σύγκρουση της πένθιμης μνήμης, των λυγμών ενός ανίκητου πόνου, που βαθαίνει όσο παλιώνει και της αξόδευτης νοσταλγίας, προσωπικών εμπειριών, βιωματικής προσομοίωσης με την κοσμική θλίψη, με την εκούσια απομόνωση στην αξέχαστη ευτυχία της φυλακής ενός τραγικού παρελθόντος,
τότε εκεί, μονάχα εκεί,
σωπαίνουν οι στεναγμοί και οι θρήνοι απλώνονται στο χαρτί.
Αλλά με κάποιο τρόπο η ομορφιά της τέχνης, της γραφής, λυτρώνει, απελευθερώνει, λησμονεί
και γίνεται «θάλασσα», στοιχείο της φύσης που δεν παρεκκλίνει απο τους νόμους της, μια θάλασσα... για κάθε ζωική και πνευματική ύπαρξη.

Μια γραφή προωθητικής κατάστασης σε βαθμό κακουργηματικής αυτοπροστασίας είναι το διαμαντάκι τούτο.
Πεζογραφία που το μελάνι της καταριέται τον άλλο κόσμο, εκεί, που μάλλον,
ζουν οι αγαπημένοι,
όχι εδώ, ίσως γι’αυτό δοξολογεί τον επερχόμενο θάνατο, με δέος και ντροπιαστικό ενθουσιασμό,
με ανακλήσεις στιγμών και επικλήσεις παρέμβασης
στο αναπόδραστο, μάταια, απεγνωσμένα, πραγματικά.

Τότε, σίγουρα, μιλάμε για ένα εξαιρετικά σπουδαίο βιβλίο.
Με συγκλόνισε και με συνεπήρε εξ αρχής η τελετή δραματουργίας του Banville σε ένα έργο δίχως δράση, χωρίς αγωνία, δίχως πιεστικό ενδιαφέρον γεγονότων εξέλιξης.
Η ομορφιά της τέχνης που μιμείται την ζωή,
η ζωή που συντρίβεται απο την τέχνη σε μια ζοφερή αλήθεια,
σε μια «θάλασσα»σκοτεινή, παγωμένη, αναζωογονητική, τρομακτική, με ηδονές και οδύνες,
με χαρά και δάκρυα, με βροχές που λιάζονται στα κύματα, και με φεγγάρια που πνίγονται στις αιώνια ερωτικές παλίρροιες.
Ψυχές που αγαπήθηκαν, βουλιάζουν στον βυθό για να φέγγουν στα μνημόσυνα της ζωής, που δεν κατάφερε να σωθεί απο την ίδια της την ασάφεια, απο τον εαυτό της, απο την ίδια της την ύπαρξη.

Μία ακαταμάχητη, συγκινησιακή ομορφιά, όλο το κείμενο. Ένας μαγνήτης αναθεώρησης που ελκύει και απωθεί, που μιλάει με ερωτευμένες λέξεις και ποιητικές ζωγραφιές.
Οι γραμμές της ποίησης του συγγραφέα μεταφέρουν συναισθηματικές γνώσεις,
παρατηρήσεις ανθρωπιάς
σε ένα ρεύμα συνειδητοποίησης και ανάμειξης του πνιγμένου παρελθόντος που σοκάρει το παρόν που έκανε χημειοθεραπεία θανάτου, για ένα μέλλον που δεν ήρθε ακόμη μα του αφιερώνουμε ένα πλήρως εμπεριστατωμένο μνημόσυνο.

Το αγάπησα αυτό το πένθιμο ηχηρό ιστοριάκι, με άγγιξε, μου τέντωσε τους ψυχικούς μύες και με έσπρωξε σε μια περιδίνιση, σε έναν εσωτερικό μαίανδρο στο παρελθόν του, πότε κοντά και πότε μακριά απο τα λεγόμενα του.

Οι παροντικές αναμνήσεις του μου αποκάλυψαν την καταστροφή του, με οδήγησαν σε ένα κεντρικό καλοκαίρι σταθμό απο τα παλιά, πολύ παλιά χρόνια που διηγούνται την ιστορία των ηρώων, οι οποίοι με έφεραν και πάλι στο μελλοντικό παρόν.
Στις τελευταίες σελίδες η κορύφωση αποθεώνει και αποκαθηλώνει τα ηθικά διλήμματα, την εύθραυστη ανθρώπινη ταυτότητα, την υπαρξιακή ανασφάλεια που αντιλαμβάνεται την έλλειψη της ουσίας και την πυκνότητα της αγάπης, όταν το βάρος της αλήθειας εμποδίζει τον αγνοούμενο εαυτό να βρεθεί με το έτερο εγώ του.