“Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shape of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched and jewelled and the same ultramarine glitter on the sea. I felt inexplicably lightened; it was as if the evening, in all the drench and drip of its fallacious pathos, had temporarily taken over from me the burden of grieving.” – John Banville, The Sea

Max Morden, narrator of The Sea, is an aging, recently bereaved art historian. He has returned to a small Irish seaside town where his family took their holidays in his youth. Max’s recent loss triggers nostalgia, and his thoughts freely float between current and past events. The plot revolves around the narrator’s recent and past traumatic experiences, which are gradually revealed. Themes include memory, grief, regret, and love.

John Banville writes atmospheric evocative prose and is a wonderful wordsmith. Fittingly for a book featuring the sea, the pace contains a rhythmic component, ebbing and flowing. It is a memorable, but melancholy, meditation on the loss of innocence and the transience of life. Spurred by his traumas, the narrator engages in many self-reflections, such as:

“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.”

This book is my first by Banville but won’t be my last. It won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2005.

I have a confession to make. The real reason I read this book was not because it won The Man Booker, but because it lost to Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, one of my favorites in The British Literature genre. Interestingly enough, The Sea immediately reminded me of another of Ishiguro's, The Remains Of The Day (which did win The Man Booker for a different year), in that both are a philosophical reflection on life by a man in his later years with some secrets to reveal, a few repressed scenes to be discovered, past loved ones to be viewed from new angles, memories to be replayed with flourish, relationships past, present, future, to be over analyzed.

However, unlike The Remains Of The Day, as well as other similar titles which I feel have been able to engage the reader dramatically more, Banville's "winner" (I feel that Ishiguro should have won) failed to really hold my interest throughout. Sure, a few times I felt as if I might be with Morden by the sea in his little Chalet, with him as he unclandestinely watched Constance Grace, a woman more than twice his age with youthful desire, accompanying him as his love was then transferred to her daughter Chloe Grace, enduring the pain with him as the young version of himself was forced to learn about not only grief, loss, but also life when he witnesses death, as he married Anna, a rich socialite whom changed his entire way of life; their years together reflected their class differences, as he became isolated from his family, friends, etcetera, & finally during his last year with Anna, watching her die.

The most elegiac passages were those defining emotions as our narrator went through Anna's slow death, the terminal illness that brought them closer together yet forged them further apart. Sadly, these passages were a small percentage of the pages.

The narration could have been more polished; it was told in flashbacks, transitioning arbitrarily, without much cause, in the middle of a scene, only to switch back a few paragraphs later in the same seemingly random way. There was an idea behind this, of course; our narrator was reflecting on not only his life but the fascinations of memory. As he says many times, memory is fallible. I appreciated this as a most astute studies of the neurosciences, but in this situation, the result was more negative than positive.

As for the twist on the last several pages, it was useful in answering a few of the prominent wonderings regarding the story, but not all of them. Again, ambiguity is good, but not like this; the most important questions regarding the story's very premise (the double suicide/death he witnessed that one summer so very many years ago) are left unanswered.

Banville is, no doubt, a master of language, placing words together like a puzzle that makes everything sound so much better than I could. But in between all of the lyrical passages, there was a fluff, sometimes still beautiful, but often meaningless. I am not one that dislikes literature in this style, where many words are used to tell little, but I feel Banville could have done it better... I was left with, "Yes, this is beautiful writing, you paint elegiac pictures of the seaside, but what does it mean? So what?" The characters, I suppose, were relatable but never loveable.

(review in English below)

Este é daqueles que "primeiro estranha-se e depois entranha-se".

Apesar de ser um livro pequeno, com menos de 200 páginas, é muito denso, quer em termos de texto (muito descritivo, sendo os diálogos quase inexistentes) quer em termos de conteúdo, com a narrativa a alternar entre o momento presente, em que o narrador faz o luto pela sua mulher, e épocas anteriores, sobretudo um certo verão da sua infância - ou, mais propriamente, pré-adolescência - em que conhece a família Grace.

Não gostei do protagonista/narrador (entre outras coisas, da sua crueldade com os animais - embora a certa altura diga que não é cruel, pois não tiraria os ovos dum ninho, anteriormente confessou que batia no seu cão pelo prazer que sentia em ouvi-lo ganir de dor e também conta que uma vez arrancou patas a gafanhotos e depois deitou-lhes fogo...), mas acabei por gostar da escrita, cheia de comparações interessantes e reflexões sobre os seus sentimentos.

Gostei particularmente das inúmeras referências a quadros e pintores (o narrador está supostamente a escrever um livro sobre Bonnard), que mereciam mais umas notas de rodapé e, num mundo ideal, a reprodução dos quadros mencionados. Julgo que a tradutora não terá percebido algumas dessas referências, como p.ex. "Estava sentada numa cadeira um pouco afastada de mim, junto à parede, de lado, na mesma postura da mãe de Whistler, com as mãos cruzadas no regaço e o rosto inclinado...".


Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, mais conhecido por Whistler's Mother - pintado por James McNeill Whistler em 1871

Recomendo, portanto.

This one felt a bit off at first, but then I began to warm up to it.

Although it's a small boook, under 200 pages, it's quite dense. On one hand, the text is very descriptive, with almost no dialogue; on the other hand, it has a heavy content, the narrative alternating between the present, with the narrator mourning his late wife, and past times, specially a particular summer in his childhood - or, in fact, his pre-adolescence - when he met the Grace family.

I didn't like the protagonist/narrator (among other things, I didn't like his cruelty towards animals - although, at a certain point, he says he's not cruel because he wouldn't take the eggs from a bird's nest, he had previously confessed to hitting his dog for the pleasure of hearing it whine in pain; he also tells that one time he took the legs of some grasshoppers and then set them on fire...), but I ended up liking the writing, full of interesting comparisons and reflexions on his feelings.

I particularly enjoyed the numerous references to paintings and painters (the narrator is supposed to be writing a book about Bonnard), which deserved some footnotes and, in an ideal world, the reproduction of the mentioned paintings.

So, I'll recommend it.

DNF/page 150.

A couple years ago I would have forced myself to plod through to the end, but reading time is too precious these days to squander on books that give zero enjoyment. I began reading this book in early January, and all I can say four months later is I’d prefer to re-read Anne Enright's The Gathering than attempt to finish this. Banville's prose is so deliberately manufactured and precise that it’s a struggle to form any kind of emotional response to the words. It’s like leafing through a set of elaborate geometric constructions versus looking at paintings – devoid of spontaneity, texture, and colour.

3.5 stars

The Sea is the sort of book that I feel is truly enhanced when listened to as an audiobook. The language is beautiful and almost lyrical and the narration allows the words to wash over you. That being said, not a lot happens in this book. It is filled essentially with ruminations on life and death in the context of the story of a man returning to a place he used to holiday as a child and after the death of his wife. Max, the protagonist is not a very likable figure, so I didn't truly connect to him or the story, though I can understand why it was chosen to win the Man Booker in 2005 (it is not lacking in pretension;-). However, it beat Ishiguro's Never Let me Go, which I can't quite comprehend when I compare the two. Banville can write, but I'm not sure he can write and tell a solid story the way Ishiguro can, but of course that is a matter of my personal taste.
If you’re looking for a gripping plot, The Sea is not for you, but if you’re looking for elegant, languorous writing, I think you might like to give this one a try.

Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com

I myself have lived near the edge of the sea for almost half a century, but I will never again regard the sea the same way after reading John Banville's The Sea. This is one of those rare books where you will keep coming back to its first line: "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide."

The place is Ballyless, a hardscrabble coastal town with some cheap "chalets" in which dwell the lower classes, including the family of Max Gorner, the book's narrator. Nearby is a seaside cottage called The Cedars in which Max sees a young family, the Graces, move in with their twin children, Chloe and Myles, and a governess named Rosie. As Max says:

So much of life was stillness then, when we were young, or so it seems now; a biding stillness; a vigilance. We were waiting in our as yet unfashioned world, scanning the future as the boy [Myles] and I had scanned each other, like soldiers in the field, watching for what was to come.

Max is drawn to the Graces, at first to the wife, Connie, and then to Chloe. There is a glitter to their lives that is missing from his rather dysfunctional family. Their table is set with high-class gadgets that leave Max both curious and a bit anxious.

We skip forward (for the time, at least -- the story keeps returning to The Cedars for fresh insights) to Max's marriage to Annie. It is a successful marriage, with Max living the life of a dilettante, presumably working on his grand project of a book on the French painter Bonnard, but actually spending Annie's money in modest comfort. This comes to an end when she is diagnosed with cancer. Most of what we hear about Max's marriage is Annie's long slow fade-out.

After Annie's death, Max returns to The Cedars as a lodger. It is now a boarding house of sorts with Miss Vavasour, the manager, the Colonel, and himself. But we keep rubber-banding back to the Graces and to Annie's death. Banville never really lets go, like a dog relentlessly chewing a bone.

But what a bone it is! This is the first book I have read by Banville, and, God willing, it won't be the last. The Irishman is a master stylist who keeps coming back to his scenes like a pointillist painter putting new touches on his various canvases. One suddenly comes upon passages such as this:

My life seemed to be passing before me, not in a flash as it is said to do for those about to drown, but in a sort of leisurely convulsion, emptying itself of its secrets and its quotidian mysteries in preparation for the moment when I must step into the black boat on the shadowed river with the coin of passage cold in my already coldening hand.

Excuse me while I adjust my facial expression, as I seem to be gaping.

No one ever said that Banville is a cheery writer. The scene where, after his wife's death, he stands in front of the mirror shaving at The Cedars and commenting about the strangeness of his aging face, is one of the most somber scenes in recent literature. And then, at the very end of the book, there are several shocking surprises which left me stunned, but which I hesitate to divulge. In the end, it could all be summarized with Max's exclamation, at one point, "What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark."

Beautifully written but tediously plotted, I struggled with whether to give this 3 stars or 4. I ended up knocking off a star because in the end my ratings are based mostly on how much I enjoyed a book, and while I can appreciate the aesthetic and literary qualities of The Sea, the bottom line is that it bored me.

Banville is one of those authors who makes art out of every sentence, and if you enjoy that sort of writing, you can immerse yourself in it and enjoy each and every word. However, I found him to be an almost but not quite perfect craftsman; his writing is not self-conscious in that pretentious way some self-styled "literary" authors get, but here and there some of his sentences were forced, like a painting where you can see the brush strokes if you look closely.

The more fatal flaw, for me, was that the story moves so very slowly, and it's a story that could easily be condensed to one page. Do you like introspective meandering by a middle-aged man who's wasted his life and now is holding each and every one of his regrets up to the light to examine it? Do you want to read about a man who turns into a washed-up alcoholic after his wife dies, and the most important thing that ever happened in his life happened when he was thirteen? Then you'll enjoy the beautiful, literary prose with which Banville delves into every nook and cranny of his protagonist's psyche, and he does illustrate every character in marvelous, sometimes breathtaking detail. His writing skill is enviable, but I'm one of those nikulturny readers who thinks storytelling is important too. This isn't a book you read to be entertained, it's a book you read so you can talk about it in book clubs and brag about how you read a Man Booker Prize-winner.

Vociferous ocean; aqueous words; the smell of the sea between the pages, lyrical, hypnotic, themes of redemption, melancholic twins, what’s not to like? Plus, I read this book when I was Human as opposed to a Werewolf I’m now; head filled with the elusive scent of hooded, red-cloaked, girl.

This book had a fragrance of its own. An individual, distinctively lugubrious scent can be found within if you pressed your face between the pages hard enough.

I can read this again and again and again, and enjoy it every time.

Đến giờ, gõ ra chữ biển mình mới thấy kì kì. Nhất là dấu hỏi. Nhưng nếu là biễn thì còn kì hơn. Có lẽ, 'biển' là quá ngắn so với cái sự mênh mông của nó.

Biển là câu chuyện của 1 thằng cha bình thường. Nói nôm na thì nó có nét giống với Người phàm và hên là không bắt đầu với: "Tôi đã sống một đời đầy hổ thẹn". Nhưng đời người mà, dù là hổ thẹn hay không cũng nặng thấy ớn. Người ta sẽ day dứt hỏi chính mình: Rốt cuộc, mình đã làm gì với cuộc đời dài đằng đẵng ấy.

Biển, như bao lời ngợi ca khác, hay ho về mặt ngôn từ. Đến nỗi, cái sự buồn ngủ khi đọc nó cũng được giảm nhẹ đi. Ờm thì, ngập ngụa trong mớ câu chữ đẹp đẽ đủ khiến người ta chìm vào giấc mộng muôn đời. Tưởng như có thể nhặt ra một mảnh cuộc đời của bất kì ai trong câu chuyện này. Một lão nghiện rượu, đầy phức cảm yêu đương thuở nhỏ, thương vợ hơn cả thương con, lạ thay lại khiến ta đồng cảm xiết bao.

Biển buồn, đọc mà cứ nghĩ câu chuyện này rồi sẽ tới đâu. Và rồi, nó chẳng tới đâu cả. Mọi chuyện đều là chuyện-đâu-đâu. Nhân vật cũng đâu-đâu nốt. Không kịch tính, không ồn ã, có lẽ nó giống với biển mùa gió lặng hơn. Vài nét chấm phá, đủ để ta thấy một đời đã xa, xa thật xa.

Biển, như Người phàm, làm mình sợ tuổi già quá đỗi. Rồi mình sẽ biến thành một lão già khó tính với cuộc đời, nát rượu và chờ thần chết tới rước. Ai biết được nhỉ?

Thật ra, chẳng thiết viết review sau mớ chữ hay ho của bác Trịnh Lữ, nhưng mình sợ, một ngày nào đó mình sẽ quên nó. Như quên đi giấc mộng phù hoa của tuổi trẻ.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.
*
But then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all?
*
We fought in order to feel, and to feel real, being the self-made creatures that we were. That I was.Could we, could I, have done otherwise? Could I have lived differently? Fruitless interrogation. Of course I could, but I did not, and therein lies the absurdity of even asking. Anyway, where are the paragons of authenticity against whom my concocted self might be measured? In those final bathroom paintings that Bonnard did of the septuagenarian Marthe he was still depicting her as the teenager he had thought she was when he first met her. Why should I demand more veracity of vision of myself than of a great and tragic artist? We did our best, Anna and I. We forgave each other for all that we were not. What more could be expected, in this vale of torments and tears? Do not look so worried, Anna said, I hated you, too, a little, we were human beings, after all. Yet for all that, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that we missed something, that I missed something, only I do not know what it might have been.

A study in grief and memory.

Golden hued and tainted. A book that evolved, revealed, and snuck up on this reader. From the beginning I enjoyed the writing style and the atmosphere, but found myself disliking the characters. Just like in life however, to dislike someone does not mean that you can not empathize with them. Much of my dislike came from a sense that the narrator had a dislike for them as well, Max Morden our protagonist is that narrator, he is much grieved and greatly dissatisfied in life.

This story beautifully portrays how memory permeates, how perspective can alter, how the most essential pieces of ourselves can be unknowable.

So what I foresaw of the future was in fact, if fact comes into it, a picture of what could only be an imagines past. I was, one might say, not so much anticipating the future as nostalgic for it, since what in my imaginings was to come was in reality already gone.

We see from Max's perspective the fulcrums of his life and what lead to each, how they transpired, whether in vivid sudden flashes or interminable periods. We witness the build, we live them with Max - it does have a tendency to feel voyeuristic, just as Max was in his younger years. Max is hiding in the past, stuck in it, going back to it in more ways than one. The time periods flow in his mind like the ebbs and tides of the sea, one overtakes the other, they are fluid and seamless.

The empathy came not from identifying so much with the character as with certain feelings that I think we all might encounter in life - the confusion of adolescence, the want to achieve or have more, and even the awkwardness that sympathies can impart. There is a raw, ugly honesty about Max, I think loss has a way of revealing that.

Among the more or less harrowing consequences of bereavement is the sheepish sense I have of being an impostor. After Anna dies I was everywhere attended upon, deferred to, made an object of special consideration. A hush surrounded me among people who had heard of my loss, so that I had no choice but to observe in return a solemn and pensive silence of my own, that very quickly set me twitching.

I know I can certainly identify with the turmoil of dealing politely with people's sympathies, being resentful of it, and feeling unworthy of it. Banville writing does not endear me to Max, but it does feel honest if not fully real.

The Sea is a touching story on how the loss of a loved one can send us tumbling through life. The past, present, and future come in and out of focus as we struggle to regain stability. And since that stability is usually taken for granted, we are not even sure what stability actually means. All we want is for life to somehow be like we was. This was a brave book for Banville to have written, and he wrote it well.

For those not aware of the Banville’s style of writing in The Sea, it should be know that he uses a stream-of-conscious technique to tell his story. This style is not a favorite of mine mostly because the writer tends to keep the story in his own court. Ideals are communicated in a constant flow of thought that shifts in timeframe, character, and experiences all within exceedingly long paragraphs. Along these same lines, there are only two chapters in the novel. There is very little room for the reader to contemplate what’s been said and to form any sort of relationship with the story.

In this particular case, however, the style works with the story. It makes the main character’s uncontrollable spin through grief relatable and real. The "why" of his loss tumbles alongside the unreasonableness of it all, and the acts that he blindly takes to regain stability all happen at the same time and without any reason. All this is true of mourning and Banville captures it well.