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

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.

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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.

“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.

CRITIQUE:

Anger and Resentment

Twelve months ago, Max Morden (a character who had a minor role in Banville's novel, n  "Athena"n - though, here, his mother denies that Max is his real name, thus questioning his whole identity) lost his wife, Anna, to cancer.

It's arguable that the novel deals with the stages of grief suffered by a surviving spouse. However, Max seems to be trapped in the stage of anger and resentment:

n
"...how could you go and leave me like this, floundering in my own foulness, with no one to save me from myself?"
n

He resents Anna for leaving him prematurely. (Surely, one of the two spouses must normally predecease the other [even if it's not known which one]? Somebody must be the survivor?)

Besides, I wouldn't describe their relationship as a particularly loving one.

There are frequent quarrels, and intimations that both spouses had had affairs (Anna with a man called Serge, and Max with one or more women he describes collectively as "Sergesses").

Anna explains, "Do not look so worried. I hated you, too, a little, we were human beings, after all."

To err or stray is, evidently, human nature.

House by the Sea

Without Anna, Max has to fill his time with some sort of substitute thought or activity (he bickers, rather than reconciles, with his daughter, Claire; he plans to write a monograph on the artist, Pierre Bonnard, but doesn't finish it by novel's end). He rents a room in a beach house called "The Cedars" (in a village he calls "Ballyless" [cf. "Ballymore"], where his family used to holiday when he was a child).

He recalls or invents memories of the Grace family (who also holidayed there), which involve erotic infatuations and trysts with both the mother, Connie, and the daughter, Chloe. It's not clear how much or how many of these memories is fabricated.


Beach View Heights, Achill, Co Mayo (Source:)

Living in the Past

Before her death, Anna tells Max:

n
"You live in the past."
n

However, it's the only thing they now share. Max himself says of the past:

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

"It was like encountering an old flame behind whose features thickened by age the slender lineaments that a former self so loved can still be clearly discerned."n  
n

From a literary point of view, the past is a work of fiction, from which the writer might assemble or construct a novel.

Embarrassment and Shame

Ever class-conscious (his father left his mother and abandoned Max, when he was quite young), Max admits that he has always been ashamed of his "origins, and even still it requires only an arch glance or condescending word...to set [him] quivering inwardly in indignation and hot resentment."

Max' way of dealing with his embarrassment and shame is to assume another identity (yet another fiction):

n  
n  "From earliest days I wanted to be someone else."n  
n

It's impossible to tell who this character ostensibly named Max really is. He isn't capable of being himself.

The Swell of the Sea

Ironically, marriage to Anna is not a consequence of his mother's injunction "nosce te ipsum" ("know thyself"). Instead:

n  
n  "Anna, I saw at once, would be the medium of my transmutation. She was the fairgound mirror in which all my distortions would be made straight...

"Henceforth I would have to address things as they are, not as I might imagine them, for this was a new version of reality."n  
n

Without Anna, Max has no compass to guide (or correct) his memory or perception of reality. Without Anna, all is muddle.

As with the past, Banville suggests that, absent a reliable compass, the present (or what we perceive as reality) is a work of fiction, transmutation or distortion that is conveyed to the shore by the swell of the sea...and deposited on the sand like so much seaweed.


SEA SHANTIES:

Senses Working Overtime

I can see foreshore
You can hear my call
I can traipse the sand
You can touch my hand
I can smell seaweed
You can taste my seed.

The Swell of the Sea [Haiku]

I can see for sure
When conveyed to the sand by
The swell of the sea.


SOUNDTRACK:

Iron & Wine - "House by the Sea"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRZV7...

Leonard Cohen - "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-bJP...

"I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me
It's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye"

Jethro Tull - "Living In The Past"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m__wm...

XTC - "Senses Working Overtime"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrcem...

The Beatles - "She Said, She Said"

https://youtu.be/rLzfo59AdEc?si=W4cUJ...

...

n  n   

The silence about me was heavy as the sea.

n  nSitting by the sea, I am trying hard to evade the embrace of camphoric memories that hover schemingly, stroked by the amorous waves. Often this colossal sapphire vial of solitude, seduced by a flicker of cuprous sky or a kiss of the timorous breeze, changes colour and instead of heaping balms of comfort, loathes me with a vision so sharp that a part of me detaches with a vile force and travels into the dense, supine but thorny gardens of bygone land. And then begins a passionate journey between these two warriors who might belong to the same clan but having grown under two vastly different masters, have acquired their traits – past and present do not let any pupil off easily.

In present, Max Morden, having lost his beloved wife, Anna and in a bid to subdue his bereavement, has returned to his childhood town of Ballyless, to ‘The Cedars’, a high-class hotel. In past, ‘The Cedars’ was the hallowed cloister of his teenage assaults which had often boomeranged on his own poor, chalet-resident soul. In present, he checks into a prime room that oversees the jeweled crust of the sea-line, enameled with stony webs and insensitive tourists. In past, this epoch room was one with his vision of infinite pool, sinking in whose bosom with an acerbic joy was his indomitable dream. In present, he gingerly maneuvers the kitchen maze and noiselessly slips into the dining chair with a cerebral ray of sunlight keeping him painfully agile. In past, that very table held his lean legs and strong arms to heighten his nubile passion for Mrs. Grace and idolatrous love for Mrs. Grace’s daughter, Chloe ( in that order), its inhabitants.

As the gusts of past hurl at the present, heavy boulders of questions, flanked by incredulity and guilt, the present retaliates with a torrid shower of indifference and futility, armed with occasional pelting of tranquil hailstones. The crystal clear mirror that his life had become was merciless in throwing his reflections which neither seemed to fit the past mantle nor could adorn the present portico. But despite such denouncement, Morden keeps the mirror in utmost care, as if his life depended on it. And that is no surprise.

We all have a small box, tucked carefully under a bed or inside an old cupboard, whose only purpose in our lives is to reshuffle it. Its occupants might wear the tags of ‘abandoned’, ‘faulty’, ‘useless’, ‘childish’, ‘silly’, ‘vulgar’, ‘scary’, ‘ignominious’ but they form a part of us that made us what we are today. And no part which plays that part is ever worth giving up. So, it beseeches the stormy nights when we witnessed our cold hearts and we let it; it invokes those blinding days when our burning pursuits ensnarled us and we let it; it inspires us with unbelievable vignettes of our audacity; it vanquishes us with equally unbelievable imprints of our timidity. Its flickering pulse does enough to keep our life monitors active and we simply take solace in the fact that it adorns our life; much like a vintage clock that does not show the right time any more but the time it shows cannot be displayed by any modern timepiece.

I return my glance to the sea and wonder if it ever felt the need to demerge past and present to keep the belligerent duo from infiltrating the fragile fabric of human heart that comes to its arms in search of aching succor. But by sending a colossal army of waves my way, it appears to have answered my pondering in Banville’s restorative thought:n  n   

Has this not always been my aim, is this not, indeed, the secret aim of all of us, to be no longer flesh but transformed utterly into a gossamer of un-suffering spirit?

n  n

“Elegiac” is one of those literary adjectives, having to do with death. You get your fill of that with this one. Hell, the main character is named Max Morden, so what do you expect? Unfortunately, the better written an elegiac novel is, the sadder it seems.

Banville, it’s fair to say, is a writer’s writer. This one got him a Booker Prize, so, lit cred out the wazoo, right? (I love playing the lowbrow in the face of such splendid erudition.) Actually, I can see how highbrows might value The Sea for its craft. It had sentences with lots of commas and a discernably tuneful cadence. It was structured well, too, switching often among settings: his boyhood summers in a seaside town, obsessed by young love; his last year with his charming, though human, wife; and his visit again to the sea as an older man with his memories and a bottle. The atmosphere was dense in a foggy sort of way.

I’m debating between 3 and 4 stars. When I think back, maybe it was a little too lyrical for my taste (which surprised me because I don’t remember feeling that way with the other Banville book I read, The Untouchable). At some level, I could appreciate the pain and the verity, but I’m not sure I really wanted to. Three it is.

“The waves clawed at the suave sand along the waterline, scrabbling to hold their ground but steadily failing.”

To be at sea. It means to have lost your bearings, like a ship adrift in the ocean. While grieving for his recently-departed wife, Max Morden visits a place from his childhood loaded with intense memories. He embodies that lost at sea state of mind, and in this novel we observe what brought him to that point, and his half-hearted attempts to survive it.

“There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it.”

Max is an art historian. He describes beauty for a living, so it’s no surprise that as he muses over his memories, his story assumes a similar shape. If you have ever taken an art history course, you may have experienced the joy of studying a scene--sometimes for days on end--seeing well beyond the composition. You observe the appearance of light and texture, the use of line and shades of color. The more you look at it, the more the art comes alive, stroke by stroke.

“Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off.”

John Banville writes in a style that almost forces me to take in his prose this way, like studying a painting. I had to read most of the book sentence by sentence, letting the beauty of the prose sink in. He doesn’t bury symbols or force you to solve puzzles, like some poetic novels I’ve read. He brings it all to the surface, with his extraordinary ability to describe in words.

There was a plot, and revelations at the end you may or may not suspect. But the joy of this book is the experience of reading the words. I don’t think the characters from this novel will necessarily stay with me, but what will stay is something much more important: the desire to look deeply. At everything.

“Really, one might almost live one’s life over, if only one could make a sufficient effort of recollection.”

This review may contain spoilers.

Max Morden, recently widowed and father of a grown daughter, has traveled back to the sea, back to the seaside property that was the scene of a tragic event some fifty odd years ago. He would remember meeting the Grace family and becoming emotionally attached to the mother, Mrs. Grace, and to falling in love with her daughter Chloe.

This is my first Banville book and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Not because I didn't think it would be good, but by how good it was, how good the writing was. The prose was so flowing and beautiful, although slightly above my reading level. The style is so uniquely different than anything I've read before.

The Sea won the 2005 Man Booker Prize, beating Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go by one vote. I haven't read that so I won't compare. But I liked this book, I like Banville's writing, and I give it four solid stars.

[Revised 9/16/22]

A gentleman reflects on his life, especially his youth, after the death of his wife.

He returns to the formative landscape of his childhood, a modest seaside town and inn in Ireland. It is also the site of the formative tragedy of his childhood.



In effect, we have a coming-of-age novel as reflected upon in later life. Instead of the psychological depth of Danish author Jens Grondahl reflecting on his marriage in Silence in October, we get lush descriptions and beautiful turns of phrase.

Thoughtful, slow reading; a treasure with many lines to savor. The Sea won the Booker Prize in 2005 and was picked as Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards in 2006.



Banville, an Irish author (b. 1945), has written about 20 novels. (I've enjoyed all six that I read). The Sea is by far his best-known work with more than 100,000 ratings on GR but it's not his highest-rated work. That's probably The Untouchable, a low-key thriller about a British spy.

Top photo of an Irish inn from telegraph.co.uk
The author from bostonglobe.com

“The past beats inside me like a second heart."

I originally read The Sea a few years back, when I was reeling from the deaths of my brother and my cat. I always embrace the sadness, the melancholy when I am down. I chalk it up to an Irish spirit in me. Depression was abetted with a weekend listening to Neil Young’s desperate “ditch trilogy.” This sort of thing has always suited me.

“The Sea” is a brilliant study of Max who, after recently losing his wife, flees to a time in his boyhood when the innocence of youth was dealt an unspeakable blow by real life. The storyline is a good one, I did not see the twist at the end the first time out. It is Banville’s writing, though, that sets this apart. He makes the sea a heavy presence, a foreboding character holding secrets, regrets, memories. I stumbled along with Max, screamed with him, and felt his anguish in my soul. We struggled to find… whatever it is we search to find in these circumstances.

“The past beats inside me like a second heart."

My partner, Barb, passed away unexpectedly on Christmas Eve– and this was the only book I could handle. Non-fiction embracing fiction. One of my favorite books ever, it may be a long time before I can visit “The Sea” again.

This is sad in a rather gushing (and I know that is not the right word) sense. He seems a writer's writer. Way too framed in his word explosions and in his mood sense tone for me to enjoy. I could not connect to this story at all. The man was just off putting to me. There are several Irish writers who I find nearly identical in this "mood" and "emotive" futility of "down" category. He's another one.

Others appreciate their considerable skills far more than I do. This style and especially the protagonist's perceptions are not for me.