n  The past beats inside me like a second heart.n

As the man or a woman grew old, especially after losing their anchor in life, that special someone, often they will retreat into memories as the past beats inside them like a second heart. Reminiscence sometimes helps to deal with grief, to find peace, and make amends for the things done or those not done when we should’ve reacted.
Max does the same after his wife’s death and the year spent watching her vanishing from the world of the living. He comes back to the seaside village on the coast of Ireland, in which he used to spend summers with his parents. That was the place where Max met the gods, the Grace family. There he first experienced adolescent lust, that for a woman that could’ve been his mother. That’s where he kissed the girl and touched her body. It is also a place that holds the ghost that haunted him from that summer day throughout his life.
Banville is one of those writers who you will love or despise. I fell in love with his writing from the first sentence but also come to hate him for his skill with words. The way he plays with them, construct those sentences that form long paragraphs that enchant you. Some might say he’s pretentious as he uses words even native English speakers will have problems knowing, but Banville is “a writer’s writer“, not the one for the masses.
Going back and forth in time so seamlessly, Banville tells a story of love, grief, and memories that stays with us. Slow-moving, sometimes almost to a standstill, “The Sea “is the novel that is not everyone’s cup of tea as it is a stream of consciousness novel without much of a plot, yet it is rewarding as it is masterfully crafted. Especially towards the end, when two timelines converge into a revelation. The calmness of the sea.

n  El pasado late en mi interior como un segundo corazón.n

El mar, uno de los grandes libros de mi vida. Una novela tan bella que duele.

n  Siempre he poseído la convicción, inmune a todas las consideraciones racionales, de que en algún momento futuro y sin especificar, el permanente ensayo que es mi vida, con sus numerosas malinterpretaciones, sus deslices y pifias, terminará, y la obra propiamente dicha, para la que me he estado preparando siempre y con tanto ahínco, comenzará por fin. Es una ilusión muy corriente, lo sé, todo el mundo la tiende. No obstante, ayer por la noche, en mitad de esa espectacular exhibición de petulancia valhalliana, me pregunté si sería inminente el momento de mi entrada, de mi "adelante", por así decir. No sé cómo será, este salto dramático al meollo de la acción, ni qué se espera que tenga lugar exactamente en escena. [...] No, lo que anhelo es un momento de expresión terrenal. Eso es, eso es exactamente: seré expresado, totalmente. Seré pronunciado, como un noble discurso de clausura. Seré, en una palabra, "dicho". ¿Acaso no ha sido siempre mi objetivo, no es, de hecho, el objetivo de todos nosotros, dejar de ser carne y transformarnos por completo en la sutiliza del espíritu que ya no sufre?n

Beautiful. Will reread when I'm in the mood to appreciate.

"A tiny sweet face, delicate of nature and pinkly aglow, is set in the big pale pudding of her head, the fossil remains, marvellously preserved, of the girl that she once was, long ago."

"I do not want solicitude. I want anger, vituperation, violence. I am like a man with an agonising toothache who despite the pain takes a vindictive pleasure in prodding the point of his tongue again and again deep into the throbbing cavity."

"When I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit, it, for cosiness... To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all that I have ever truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the harsh air's damagings."

"And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference."