Goodreads | The Sea (Paperback) by John Banville

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The Sea - language	1	11	10/06/2008 01:27AM

Kathy rated it:

07/28/08

bookshelves: fiction

The Sea really bugged me. I've never read another John Banville novel, so I don't know whether this one is typical of his writing in general, but nothing irritates me more these days than a writer who has considerable gifts at his command who writes novels that function as elegant window displays for the considerable gifts at his command. The plot of the book, such as it is, finds middle-aged Max Morden retiring to a rented house by the sea, near the "chalets" where he spent his boyhoo...more The Sea really bugged me. I've never read another John Banville novel, so I don't know whether this one is typical of his writing in general, but nothing irritates me more these days than a writer who has considerable gifts at his command who writes novels that function as elegant window displays for the considerable gifts at his command. The plot of the book, such as it is, finds middle-aged Max Morden retiring to a rented house by the sea, near the "chalets" where he spent his boyhood summers, to mourn his wife's death and think about the past. The first person account intercuts Max's memories of his wife's final months with his memories of a "significant" summer he spent by the sea, during which he became fascinated with the Graces, a family a rung or two higher on the social ladder than Max himself. I put "significant" in quotation marks, because I can't for the life of me figure out what's significant about Max's relationship with the Graces, other than the opportunity it affords Banville to display his considerable gifts, and -- what's worse -- I can't even fathom what's significant about his wife's death other than the opportunity it affords Banville . . . well, you get the idea. The premise of the novel seems to be "Hey, look at me, everybody, I'm the 'heir to Nabokov.' The back of the book says so. And besides, my book is filled with Beautiful Prose." The linking of Banville's name with Nabokov on the back of the book does Banville a considerable disservice. I kept expecting withering satire and a devastating prose style (Banville is good, but he's not that good), and all I got was the narrator's tendency to pepper his recollections with big, bloated words.

"Character-driven" novels are not of themselves a bad thing. Perhaps my favorite novel of the last thirty years (Gilead) relies more on character than on plot. If you're going to rely on character, however, you'd better make sure your characters are at least one, and preferably all, of the following: a) sympathetic; b) compelling; c) more than merely a place marker for inflated, if not particularly profound, ruminations on the Big Questions.

One of Banville's passages may illustrate what bothers me most about this book. In the passage, Morden describes the photographs his terminally ill amateur-photographer wife has taken of fellow hospital patients -- all of whom have, apparently cheerfully, consented to expose their scars, wounds, and afflictions for the sake of . . . photographic immortality? . . . the gratification of their exhibitionist desires? . . . the betterment of mankind? I got stuck, as I read this passage, trying to figure out why the people in the photographs had agreed to present their private suffering in so public a fashion. Then I realized they were props, placed on stage to be rearranged and remarked upon, to give the leading man something to do while he wows us with his method acting. Oh, come on, one might object, isn't Yorick's skull a prop? Of course, but it's not merely a prop. We admire Hamlet's ability to make him live again, but that's just it. He makes him live again. Nobody really lives in Banville's novel, including his narrator, and perhaps that's not surprising in a novel that is mostly about death. What's more surprising, though, is that, for all his lovely style, Banville leaves us with very little impression that anyone in this book ever really has lived.

In the book's final passages, Max Morden likens the moment of his wife's death to a moment in his childhood when he had been lifted up by a suddenly surging sea, carried toward shore a bit, and then set down again. It was, he says, "as if nothing had happened. And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference." That's what it feels like to read <iThe Sea.</i>...less

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Erica rated it:

07/13/07

Read in July, 2007

When John McGahern died last year, I wondered if I would find someone to replace him as my favorite living Irish author. I think that John Banville comes close. His use of language is impeccable, especially in his descriptions of characters. In The Sea, the lovable, pitiable (is that a word?) narrator, Max, is a writer who returns to the seaside town of his youth after his wife dies. Using flashbacks, we learn the complex story of his first love(s), which revolves around a wealthy family tha...more

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Yulia rated it:

(review of isbn 0307263118)

04/21/08

bookshelves: enjoyably-awful, read-to-me-by-frank

Read in January, 2006

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...more 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, Frey 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? ...less

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Frank rated it:

(review of isbn 0307263118)

03/01/08

recommends it for: John Banville's Mother

What in the hell just happened. Did I really trudge through all that overly-wrought prose only to curse Banville for producing the hint of redemption in the end of this thesaurus-spawn mud puddle? Thank you Booker Prize for yet another quality laugh. Here's a quality quote for those in doubt:

"seeming not to walk but bounce, rather, awkward as a half-inflated barrage balloon buffeted by successive breath-robbing blows out of the past."

You've got to be kidding me John: here here ...more

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Trisha rated it:

08/16/08

Read in August, 2008

I think there's a big difference between literature and fiction, and this book is a perfect example - as is obvious from the number of negative reviews posted on this website! Some books can be read purely for their entertainment value. We like reading them because the plots and settings and characters capture our interest. That's what fiction does. But some books provide an additional dimension for readers who are willing to put a little more time and thought into what they are reading and w...more

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Heather rated it:

07/17/08

I started this on my lunch hour yesterday, after seeing it on my Amazon.com recommendations list, and finished it just after Mike got home from work late last night. (Remember that I've previously said I shouldn't read at home because, when I do, nothing gets done...)

Banville's book was written for me to read. It is simply, harrowingly amazing. Each word, each phrase, each sentence is a literary delight and the only reason it took me 5 hours to read this book was because I kept re-reading pa...more

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Alb rated it:

07/06/08

Read in June, 2008

Initially this novel drew me in with its rich prose and methodical pace. In fact, the Sea's style and tone reminded me at first of Marilyn Robinson's Gilead, which I loved. Both novels follow an elderly man as he contemplates the choices he has made throughout his life and considering the impact of those decisions on his life. However unlike Gilead, which uses rich language to demonstrate the complexity of the character's feelings towards his relationships, the Sea lacks strong character develop...more

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Heather rated it:

02/19/08

Has a copy to sell/swap

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Pa rated it:

01/28/08

Mostly exquisitely written but occasionally over the top, John Banville’s the Sea is the story of Max Morden, a 60-year-old or something art historian, who returned to Ballyless, an Irish seaside village, to grieve the recent loss of his wife to cancer, but here Max found himself submerged in a flood of memories of a summer 50 years before where he met the wealthy and sophisticated Grace family and encountered love and death for the first time. In essence, the Sea is a novel about growing up ...more

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Jenny rated it:

01/10/08

Read in January, 2008

I trust that the Booker Prize judges are far wiser than I am with literary matters, but this was one of the most disappointing reads ever. I really didn't enjoy this book at all. I felt like I was reading a manuscript turned in for a writers workshop, not an award-winning book. And I don't mean a writers workshop at Iowa either. More like an MFA program at some state school.

Want to see what I mean? Here's an excerpt:
"It was very strange. I saw the scene as if from outside myself, the...more

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becky rated it:

12/24/07

bookshelves: booker-winners

Read in December, 2007

this novel seems to be of the love-it-or-hate-it variety, judging by others' reviews of it. personally, i loved it. in fact, i loved it much more than both on beauty by zadie smith and never let me go by kazuo ishiguro, both of which it beat out to win the 2005 booker prize. this novel is told in stream-of-consciousness format by an aging irishman whose wife has recently died; he skips around through memories of various stages of his life, primarily a summer he spent at the sea whe...more

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David rated it:

01/03/08

Read in December, 2007

"but then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all." i nodded my head to that sentence after i read it and then my telephone rang. i marked the page with a torn new yorker subscription card. what better place than this tiny white box to put this so it can be said and then deleted. I nodded yes to that sentence and then last night my telephone rang and it was my mother. small and one thousand miles away. the...more "but then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all." i nodded my head to that sentence after i read it and then my telephone rang. i marked the page with a torn new yorker subscription card. what better place than this tiny white box to put this so it can be said and then deleted. I nodded yes to that sentence and then last night my telephone rang and it was my mother. small and one thousand miles away. the blood test was back. the count was much much higher than normal and the surgery is scheduled for the 17th. and hanging up to another call from my brother, it doesnt mean it's cancer. and then my sister, i didnt expect the level to be so high, its not great but the surgery is the first step. and then you go on from there. and my other brother in an email. the silence of the email. "we can help you getting here and back." page 25. and i am beneath fluorescent lights at work. looking up flights. entering information into a database and listening to joel plaskett through thin white headphone wires "i want a drink and then i want another, i'm getting tired of waiting on this winter. if its going to snow i wish it would start instead of waiting three months to break this heart. ohhhhooooo are you coming. ohhhoooo are you going." page 25. and telephone calls. and music to devastate you. you stay optimistic and you end every conversation with i love you. and you are good. and kind. but you cant stop thinking about rocking chairs. and old station wagons across the peace bridge into canada, my mother looking out the window to the niagara river. and i am imagining her looking there and thinking about herself in high school walking across the ice bridge at the base of niagara falls one winter. the only day of high school she ever missed. the cold of it. the temporariness of it. an ice bridge formed that winter and she walked across it. page 25. and a telephone call.

so. so. so. it is amazing to me. how sickness. or death. or a diagnosis so suddenly compresses time. and how everything. everything is brief snippets of moments. i flew up and spent a week and a half in buffalo, getting to spend a couple of days before her surgery. and then the rest in the hospital. feeding her ice chips. and holding her hand. remembering while she slept. she was diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer. i cant stop thinking about all these tiny moments. my mother smiling. i went through a box of old photographs and found my mother all behive and glasses. the light capturing her. the photographs fading but brilliant. and flipping through them of pictures of my brothers and sister as little children all dressed up tight against the winter. i saw her in the scarves. and mittens. and this is the point. you know.

so. i want you all to have a new year where you see the beauty in every slipping moment. and feel the sunshine on the rainiest of days. and when everything is going wrong you notice a flower in a crack of pavement. or the smile of someone on a subway. or bus. i want you all to see the sunlight break through and hit a fire hydrant in a way that reveals a burst of brilliant red. and that the sidewalks were put there by some hand or hands that are gone. i want your new year to be full of the best seconds in every minute. and that there are many people who love you and want nothing more than for you to be happy. ...less

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Aaron rated it:

09/13/07

bookshelves: literary, modern

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: People probably a lot older than me. Or who just like really good writing.

There are two kinds of myth. One, the common kind, is reserved for tales like The Odyssey and other old tales, and perpetutaed in modernity by the concepts set forth in Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces. These myths rely on content, that is the nature of the tale, to bring them to such a legendary level. That is not to say that their method of telling is not of mythic calibre, just that their content is why they are defined as such.

Then there is the other breed, in ...more

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Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 0330483285)

06/28/07

recommends it for: Irish lit lovers

Like many of Banville's books, The Sea presents itself to the reader as a fictional document penned by the narrator that alternates the present with the past. This narrator likes to drink, has a hard-on for fine art even though he has failed to establish a name for himself in this principal passion, has fallen on hard times, and makes a fetish out of descriptions of the effect of light. (One wonders if Banville keeps track of all the things he's illuminated, and the things he's compared them to,...more Like many of Banville's books, The Sea presents itself to the reader as a fictional document penned by the narrator that alternates the present with the past. This narrator likes to drink, has a hard-on for fine art even though he has failed to establish a name for himself in this principal passion, has fallen on hard times, and makes a fetish out of descriptions of the effect of light. (One wonders if Banville keeps track of all the things he's illuminated, and the things he's compared them to, so that he doesn't repeat himself.) This is definitely Banville territory, but where, I wondered, were the scoundrels, murderers and pederasts?

The prose is dense, the pace is slow, and the characters are exceptionally timid people -- a spinster daughter, a consumptive Army colonel, a widower who drinks too much -- each more unsympathetic than the last. Banville's protagonists are always massively flawed men, but we permit the paragraphs about oil paintings or the way a patch of light shimmers on the floor because they are digressions. These are men who do things. Granted, they are nasty, rotten things, but they are very efficient as conflict-generating machines. The Sea's narrator is all the more loathsome because he has done nothing with his life and doesn't aspire to change. No plot, no conflict, no drama. I was convinced Banville's fourteenth novel was nothing more than a memory experiment gone awry, chugging sluggishly to nowhere.

Then, halfway through the novel, everything changes. The phantom plot materializes and asserts itself in a way that makes you realize it was there all along, buried in the now essential digressions. The characters crackle with acrimony, the relationships become increasingly adversarial, all of which distracts the reader from a plot turn so startling, fresh and - yes, epiphanic - it's impossible to see it coming. The accumulation of detail reaches a kind of critical mass that transforms the narrative into something utterly new. The Sea is to the short novel what "The Dead" is to the long short story. I was blind not to have seen it sooner; thankfully, the judges of the Booker Prize were not.

(Excerpted from an review published in October 2005 at The Elegant Variation:
marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2...)

...less

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Emily rated it:

(review of isbn 0307263118)

10/31/07

bookshelves: book-club, read-in-2006-2007

Read in October, 2007

Definitely on the short list of best books I've read all year. Banville's writing is resplendent. I agree with those published reviews of the book that suggest that "Banville is the heir to Nabokov." Like Nabokov, Banville's style is lush and simple at the same time, and he writes memory so evocatively. I was inspired, touched, and totally fulfilled by my reading of this book.

A favorite passage (one of many):
"In those endless October nights, lying side by side in the...more

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David marked it as to-read (review of isbn 0307263118)

04/22/08

bookshelves: to-read

I'm reasonably confident that I will never read this book, but I'm definitely clipping Barry Forshaw's incandescent review as fodder for my collection of hackneyed review cliches.

In three taut, elegant paragraphs, Forshaw leaves the reader breathless, stunned by the vacuous pomposity of his unusually moribund parade of bloviated buzzwords. Never one to eschew the sesquipedalian latinate impenetrability, Forshaw deploys them throughout his review with laserlik...more

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Kate rated it:

10/25/07

Read in December, 2007

First reaction: Beautiful writing. I may actually finish this one.

Half-way point reaction: This book is hella depressing me. Banville is SO astute, so accurate in describing feelings that I not only recall pain I've experienced but am starting to project onto myself the fears and feelings of having a partner who is dying. Hopefully this is just PMS. It's a hard book to read on several levels.

Finished: Wow. The second half is much easier to follow, for some reason. Like Stegner, Banville'...more

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jade added it (review of isbn 0307263118)

07/10/07

Read in July, 2007

any reader of depressing irish fiction (or watcher of indie films) will know exactly what the final twist is as soon as they've read about twenty pages of this book. i don't know. maybe, despite predecting the ending, i just didn't get it. some of the sentences are gorgeous, some of the imagery is perfect and unexpected (ex. the man and his wife, after getting some very bad news, fall into bed 'like toppled statues'), but in the end reading this felt like a chore.

if you want to read a b...more

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Frank rated it:

07/14/08

Read in July, 2008

The way this book was written, forces you to read at a slow, mundane pace. I guess I'm not used to that writing style. There were seriously 20 commas in each sentence, each one describing something unrelated to the main sentence.

It's as if, if, what a curious word, we were to walk to the sea, drenched in solitude and bullshit, and meander through time, as though time could be wasted in this precious life, as precious as the glimmer of a jewel, on pretentious terms, as John Banville accomp...more

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Prayathna rated it:

(review of isbn )

05/13/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Just down thirty odd pages. Must say that Banville (meri John, to borrow a phrase from Sunil) seems to have put all these words together with so much time and love. You know, much like the master craftsmen who paints a lady up so beautifully down to the last level of detail. Why, even the fingers seem to have been pondered upon and done in such fluid intricacy.
Each sentence is a shining example of aforementioned painted fingers. Honestly, I almost think they will jump out any moment and play a ...more

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The Sea

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