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The Sea

3.41 of 5 stars 3.41 · rating details · 8,999 ratings · 1,124 reviews

In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he exper...more

Paperback, 195 pages

Published August 15th 2006 by Vintage (first published January 1st 2005)

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Apr 21, 2008 Yulia rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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 ot...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, Banville 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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BohoMon Thanks for this review. I read for beautiful prose first, but it lays flat if that is a novel's raison d'être. I'm still going to give this one a go,...more
Mar 14, 2011 05:23am

The Chameleon I'm commenting because it's the first review on the page regarding the book. I would have to disagree with the rating - but with some disclaimers. Ban...more
Oct 12, 2012 05:12pm

Mar 04, 2012 David marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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 beautifully text...more 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 beautifully textured transparency. Meaningless adjectives are scattered throughout the review to delight the reader, much like the partially gnawed limbs of the Donner Party. This review will make you pee your pants, it's such a fracking fully realised tour de force.

As the link to Forshaw's review is no longer accessible, I include it below:

Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work.

Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw

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Jul 28, 2008 Kathy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 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 boyhood summers,...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 (less)

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Nov 04, 2011 Jay F rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jay F by: Man Booker 2005 Winner

Shelves: literature-english-language

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 I...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Mmars rated it 5 of 5 stars

In a stream of thoughts, the narrator whose wife has just died of cancer, centers his memories around a childhood seaside summer and his relationship with the Graces, a family that bewildered and fascinated him. He leaves his nearby home to stay in the house that the Graces occupied that summer. This has set off a flood of memories, both vivid and half-remembered.

His childhood lot is that of the lowest echelon of classes in that seaside community, while the Graces are of the highest. He cannot...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Trisha rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 who...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Moses Kilolo rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

Beautiful language, eh? Well, despite it and my awe of it, this took me quite a while to get to the end. I naturally immersed myself into the deep and highly stylized memory (or is it the invention) of Banville's narrator Modern. I felt the heaviness of his mourning his wife lost to cancer, and slightly pitied him of the strained relation with his daughter. The book only see...more

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Jan 26, 2010 S. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-noms, read-in-2010, 1001-list

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, and so smooth that one cou...more 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, and so smooth that one could hardly feel the joins between the staves; smoothly sawn, that is, and planed, but in texture the sodden grain-end of the wood there was slightly furry, or napped, rather, like the pod of a bulrush, only tougher to the touch, and chillier, and more moist. Although it must have held I do not know how many scores of gallons, it was always full almost to the brim, thanks to the frequency of rain in these parts, even, or especially, in summer.”

The narrator is pretending to write a book about the painter Bonnard and here is one of my favorite passages from The Sea, which surely brought to mind the sumptuous bath of language:

“In 1927, Bonnard bought a house, Le Bosquet, in the undistinguished little town of Le Cannet on the Cote d’Azur, where he lived with Marthe, bound with her in intermittenly tormented seclusion, until her death fifteen years later. At Le Bosquet she developed a habit of spending long hours in the bath, and it was in her bath that Bonnard painted her, over and over, continuing the series even after she had died. The 'Baignoires' are the triumphant culmination of his life’s work. In the 'Nude in her bath, with dog,' begun in 1941, a year before Marthe’s death and not completed until 1946, she lies there, pink and mauve and gold, a goddess of the floating world, attenuated, ageless, as much dead as alive, beside her on the tiles her little brown dog, her familiar, a dachshund, I think, curled watchful on its mat or what may be a square of flaking sunlight falling from an unseen window. The narrow room that is her refuge vibrates around her, throbbing in its colors. Her feet, the left one tensed at the end of its impossibly long leg, seem to have pushed the bath out of shape and made it bulge at the left end, and beneath the bath on that side, in the same force-field, the floor is pulled out of alignment too, and seems on the point of pouring away into the corner, not like a floor at all but a moving pool of dappled water.”

I was well aware of Banville’s powers going into this book, and the fact that this one won the Booker Prize made me hope it would be the best. But for all its beautiful ruminating, I would have appreciated a tiny bit more plot. And I felt that the narrator asked me to plunge too quickly into sympathy with him with his “ah me”s and other emphatics on the first pages. Not that they were huge on plot but I found Athena or The Book of Evidence superior to The Sea. Athena had its dark mystery, The Book of Evidence its blunter, more ironic dark. I think the Booker folks were afraid, having let some other Banville beauties go by, that if they didn't give this one the Booker Prize they might not see its ilk again. (In a similar case, Ian McEwan won the Booker for "Amsterdam," which had to be one of his worst books, in my opinion.)

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Jul 13, 2007 Erica rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 that he...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Linaart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

По принцип харесвам такива книги – от „Алтера” ми я представиха като монологична и е точно такава - размисли, спомени, терзания... Настроена за книга без пряка реч, дори се изненадвах, когато на десетина места се разменяха реплики...

Харесват ми книги, в които се описва не само какво се случва, а как се преживява то от героите. Също е от типа книги, при които накрая се връщам да препрочета някои харесани моменти; имам чувството, че нещо е останало неуловено и не може да се запомни лесно, защото и...more По принцип харесвам такива книги – от „Алтера” ми я представиха като монологична и е точно такава - размисли, спомени, терзания... Настроена за книга без пряка реч, дори се изненадвах, когато на десетина места се разменяха реплики...

Харесват ми книги, в които се описва не само какво се случва, а как се преживява то от героите. Също е от типа книги, при които накрая се връщам да препрочета някои харесани моменти; имам чувството, че нещо е останало неуловено и не може да се запомни лесно, защото има много „тънки”, ефирни неща, не просто разказване на видимото. Може да не стане една от най-любимите ми книги, но все пак е доста хубава.

В първата половина леко ми пречеше разбърканата хронологическа „тройност” (детство - живот с Анна - живот без Анна) – докато се разказваше за живота с/без Анна, забравях за героите/моментите от детството. Но точно обратното, във втората половина това безразборно редуване започна да ми харесва. Дори положително ме впечатли, че преходите не са в различни глави, а директно в следващ параграф се преминава 50 години напред/назад. Определено последните стотина страници ми харесаха повече – чак се чудех: имало ли е защо първите сто да не ми харесат много..?

Героят започна да се разкрива все повече, но дълго все пак ми оставаше чужд. В крайна сметка не мисля, че трудното опознаване е „вина на автора” – от една страна може би всичко това се дължи на типичната ирландска странност, и от друга – на моментното ми странно състояние (аз самата сякаш не се отдадох на книгата дълго). Освен това – толкова познато: мъжът по принцип е по-затворен и по-трудно изразява емоции и се оголва, по-трудно е да излезе от черупката (чак на стр. 160 от 200 се "разкрещя" неудържимо (на ум)). Шокиращи внезапни вулгарности, но аз му виках: "Давай, давай!" Сякаш болката е забита по-надълбоко (няма начин - освен болестта на жена му, предостатъчни са му детските тежести - "развръзката" с Хлое, избягалия баща...)

Хареса ми езикът – сравнително познати чувства и преживявания, описани по богат начин, който е различен от богатия начин на други автори, дори и да се отнася за сходни неща... Не само вътрешните преживявания описва изразително Банвил, но и външността на хора и места рисува проницателно и многоизмерно.

Попаднах и на няколко неща - дребни елементи - които никога не съм срещала, не съм се сещала, че могат да бъдат плод на човешките възприятия. А това много ценя: да усетя в книга нещо за първи път...

Важна основна тема – загубата на life-long партньор като нещо непреодолимо, дори и той да не е бил обект на безгранична любов през годините; ефектът на привикването към съпруг/съпруга, независимо от отношенията; учене на живот по нов начин след боледуването/загубата на половинката (имаше израз от рода на „сега трябва да се уча да живея сред живите”).
Изобщо между всички имаше болезнени, трудни отношения, а не леки и ведри, включително в семейство Грейс, без да има пълно обяснение за това, без дори да си личи много, че наистина е така.

В обобщение – очаквах да ми хареса като за 5 звезди, но ми хареса като за 3,5-4 (засега).

P.S. След прочита на книгата ми изплува мисълта дали неизбежната сексуалност при малки и големи не е в дъното на (почти) всичко...? ;)(less)

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Aug 05, 2011 Stephen M rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: cured-my-insomnia, ocean-of-noise, you-can-do-better-than-me, mentions-mitchell

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, it was buried underneath the weight of endless adjectives and billowy senten...more

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Marius Hancu I don't think The Sea has any issues with the timeline. He's going deeper and deeper into the past, like an archeologist, until that most painful of m...more
updated Nov 07, 2012 09:30pm

Marius Hancu This is from TBOE, which I haven't read yet (sorry, I don't have text for The Sea):

---
I woke in splintered sunlight with a shriek fading in my ears. B...more
updated Nov 08, 2012 10:50am

Dec 15, 2011 Angus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize, reviewed-and-blogged

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 course I was intrigued. I am glad I have a copy, a mass market I bought four years ago at regular price. I am not sure why I didn’t immediat...more

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Apr 25, 2009 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People probably a lot older than me. Or who just like really good writing.

Shelves: character, idea, setting

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 the writing...more

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Mar 01, 2008 Frank rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 I say to b'alliter...more

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May 09, 2011 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

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

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Jan 22, 2011 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ireland

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...more 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."(less)

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Apr 17, 2009 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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

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Mar 23, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, library-loan, irish-literatura, contemporary-fiction, man-booker-prize, read-2013

What a magnificent book, I am glad my library has one copy of this unforgettable book.

This is the story of Max Morden who, while he is mourning the loss of his wife, remembers his childhood in a seaside town. These flashbacks don't many any breaks into the narrative, on the contrary, we are able to follow Max's good and bad moments of his entire life.

Now, I must read more books written by this author.

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Mar 02, 2009 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 in m...more 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 in memories of his wife as the young woman he married, as the frightened woman diagnosed with cancer, and as a dying woman in hospital. He also wallows in memories of the events of that long-ago summer where he played a vital role in the tragedy. Mr. Banville nicely ties together the loose ends of the long-ago tragedy, explaining the mysteries behind it and bringing it back full circle to the present day, but he keeps it clearly and distinctly separate from the much more recent tragedy of the death of Max's wife.

Why? Should the story of the long-ago tragedy have been excised from this book and published as a separate novella? What relation does long-ago grief bear to present, unrelated grief? If I could fathom how the long-ago tragedy helped to shape and change Max's character, I might have a facile answer to this question, but I do not. Max was a vulnerable bully as a boy and he is a vulnerable bully as a man. And so my answer is perhaps that, as much as anything, this novel is a meditation on memory and the way it works. I cannot see the connections between the long-ago tragedy and the present-day one, but that does not mean they don't exist -- or, to be more precise -- that does not mean that Max has not constructed such connections.

Max joins Rabbit Angstrom in my own little pantheon of characters that I do not admire and do not like, but nonetheless have a certain measure of grudging respect for. I did not like the way Max behaved as a boy, and I do not like the way he treats his daughter -- herself grieving the loss of her mother -- as a man.

I wavered between granting this book three and four stars. I'm not sure that my eventual decision was based on the fact that this book won the Booker (I am often in thrall to other peoples' opinions), or if it was based on the idea that any book that makes me think this hard also deserves a certain measure of grudging respect, or on some combination thereof. (less)

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Jan 16, 2009 Amber rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 literary genius as so...more

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Mar 25, 2009 bookczuk rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookcrossing, ho-hum

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 for a nice...more 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 for a nice read, but found myself oddly unhappy with the pace and plot of the novel. I'd be captured by a phrase or a bit of poetic description, and then thrust back into the vortex of feeling stupid, and as if I have a paltry vocabulary. But those are my own inadequacies, I suppose. There is beauty in the sea and here is beauty in The Sea-- it just takes patience and effort to get there.

From the Publisher:
In a narrative that moves seamlessly back and forth in time, Max relives the childhood summer he met the Graces, a well-healed vacationing family who took him in and unwittingly introduced him to a world of feeling he'd never experienced before. The seductive mother, the imperious father, the twins Chloe and Myles--in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled--each of them played a part in what Max still remembers as the "barely bearable raw immediacy of childhood."

Interwoven with this story are his memories of his past with his wife--and of her long decline into illness--and with moments, both significant and mundane, of his present life: with his grown daughter Claire who wants to pull him from his grief, and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying and where the past beats inside him "like a second heart." What he comes to understand about that past and the way it has shaped his state of heart and mind now is at the center of this emotionally powerful tale.

The Sea is a return for the author as well: to the vivid drama and narrative élan that were the hallmarks of The Untouchable. It is the best novel yet from this extraordinary writer.(less)

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Jul 17, 2008 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 passag...more

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Jul 06, 2008 Alb rated it 2 of 5 stars

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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Feb 19, 2008 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Jan 28, 2008 Pa rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 and...more

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Jan 10, 2008 Jenny O rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 dining roo...more

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Dec 24, 2007 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-winners

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

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Jan 03, 2008 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

"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 tes...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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Jun 28, 2007 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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:
[http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2...])

(less)

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Mar 12, 2009 Leland rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ireland, general-fiction

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.

3 likes · like · see review

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About John Banville

Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up...more Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.

Educated at a Christian Brothers' school and at St Peter's College in Wexford. Despite having intended to be a painter and an architect he did not attend university. Banville has described this as "A great mistake. I should have gone. I regret not taking that four years of getting drunk and falling in love. But I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to be free." After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.

After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995, he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left. Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to Aosdána, but resigned in 2001, so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the cnuas.

Banville also writes under the pen name Benjamin Black. His first novel under this pen name was Christine Falls, which was followed by The Silver Swan in 2007. Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing". Banville has two daughters from his relationship with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland.

Banville has a strong interest in vivisection and animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.(less)

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Quotes from The Sea

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.” — 48 people liked it

“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.” — 18 people liked it

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