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Jul 28, 2008

Kathy rated it:

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...

5 comments like (19 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Trisha rated it:

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...

12 comments like (37 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Yulia rated it:

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 lette More...

10 comments like (11 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Jay rated it:

When my wife died suddenly in 1998 from a cerebral aneurysm, one of the things that I did in the wake of her death was to begin to reconnect with people and places that had meaning both for us as a couple and for me alone. In many cases, I ended up returning to places from my own childhood and reconnecting with people whom I had not contacted for years. Both the process itself and the actual reconnections to past places and friends helped me cope with the loss. It also activated memories that More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2010

S. rated it:

Reading John Banville is like taking a long, sumptuous bath. In my book, he is one of the finest prose stylists alive. The man can write. His language and sentences are gorgeous.

I’d like to say Banville is a marvel at describing characters but in fact he’s a marvel at describing everything, from a breeze to a rain barrel:

“It was a wooden barrel, a real one, full-size, the staves blackened with age and the iron hoops eaten to frills by rust. The rim was nicely bevelled, an More...

7 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2007

Erica rated it:

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...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2011

Stephen M rated it:

Prose style: 2
Plot : 2
Depth of characters: 2
Overall sense of aesthetic: 1
Originality: 3
Entertaining: 1
Emotional Reaction: 1
Intellectual Stimulation: 3
Social Relevance: 2
Writerly Inspiration: 1

Average = 1.8

I think this suffers from one basic writerly technique; describe what something is, not what something is like. If there were characters, a story or some kind of dramatic tension in this pile of high brow prattle More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2011

Angus rated it:

Disclaimer: This is not a review. This may have spoilers. Read at your own risk. Visit original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

I was compelled to read this immediately after finishing Never Let Me Go. Call me a rabid fan of the novel, yes. I admit it. I have no shame. And I cannot believe why it did not win the Booker Prize of 2005.

And this, The Sea, written by an unknown writer to me back then, was chosen by that year’s jury as the winner. Of cours More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 25, 2009

Aaron rated it:

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 which More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Frank rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

May 09, 2011

Chris rated it:

The Sea is one of those rare books that I not only gave up on, but actually sold to a second-hand shop afterwards. Booker Prize winner, highly lauded in rec.arts.books and a handful of internet forums that I frequented in those days, and a pastel pastiche of hyper-pictorial pablum. Frankly, I don't remember a whole lot of this very brief excursion into Banvillea other than the endless, and I do mean endless descriptions and depictions of the sky—the shape and color of the clouds, whether it was More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2011

Jim rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 17, 2009

Abailart rated it:

My first Banville novel. It is very playfully written, twists and turns around place and identity, and is deeply moving. It is a meditation on loss, death and the sea of indifferent time. Also the real sea, a real place, and real people who seem more real to the narrator than he can ever feel himself to be. Max Morden, windowed, drinking heavily and very lonely retires to a somewhat shabby guesthouse that was the centre of events in his childhood. Set among an equally shabby Irish resort, in win More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

I was very puzzled by The Sea, the Man Booker prize-winning novel by John Banville. Mr. Banville's main character, the infinitely-more-erudite-than-I Max Morden, has recently lost his wife to cancer. In what I can only see as Max not seeking solace, but, rather, in falling prey to the same impulse that makes us pick at scabs while knowing full well that they will bleed, Max returns to the scene of a tragedy that occurred back when he was on the cusp of adolescence. At that scene, he wallows i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 16, 2009

Amber rated it:

I can honestly say that I gave this book everything I had and it was far from enough. I read to exactly halfway then allowed myself the freedom to shut it quickly. I did prevent myself from spitting on it, or burning it. Which wouldn't have been good since it is rented from the library. *smirks*

This is my first attempt at reading off the 1001 books you must read before you die list. I will try again at some point. But right now I feel I just must not be on the same level of lite More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 25, 2009

bookczuk rated it:

Once again, I find myself slightly baffled y the Booker Prize selection committee...it's not that this isn't well written, but at times I found the complexity of the words a bit too much . (Okay, to be fair, I had surgery and tried to read this while recovering-- pain meds may have played a huge part in my dull-wittedness.) But I also found myself somewhat depressed by the story. Granted, it begins beautifully-- "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide." I ssettled in f More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2008

Heather rated it:

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-re More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jul 06, 2008

Alb rated it:

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...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2008

Heather rated it:

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

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2008

Pa rated it:

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 an More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2008

Jenny rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 24, 2007

Becky rated it:

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 when he was eleve More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2008

David rated it:

"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...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2007

Jim rated it:

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...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2009

Leland rated it:

An exquisitely well crafted novel. Banville has indeed inherited the talent and wit of Nabokov.

The Sea is the story of a middle aged man who returns to a sea-side town he knew as a child after the death of his wife. There he revisits and relives the relationships and experiences of his childhood, and confronts the often gloomy reality of his present.

A vivid and stylistically beautiful novel. Banville will forever be remembered for this work.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 31, 2007

Emily rated it:

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 i More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2008

David marked it as 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 laserlike precision and beau More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2007

Kate rated it:

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 St More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 13, 2009

Lazarus rated it:

Amongst the most accomplished contemporary prose stylists of his generation, Banville succeeded in providing another understated but haunting tale.

Art historian Max Morden returns to the holiday seaside village of his childhood where memories of his relationship with the charismatic Grace family and its repercussions are reawakened.

Previously only short-listed, Banville managed on this occassion to produce an hypnotic and disturbing Booker Prize winner.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

jade added it

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 More...

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