The Sea, the Sea in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 25, 2015 Steve rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Back in the 80s, both my wife and I read a number of Iris Murdoch novels. We always enjoyed them, but looking back, they're not exactly the kind of novels you remember much about. They were all similar. Usually they involved several friends (academics or artists or both) thrown together over something, some cheating, love, jealousy, funny dialogue, and usually a tragedy to cap things off. Books I recall liking the best: The Black Prince, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, and The Bell. The Bell (an ear Back in the 80s, both my wife and I read a number of Iris Murdoch novels. We always enjoyed them, but looking back, they're not exactly the kind of novels you remember much about. They were all similar. Usually they involved several friends (academics or artists or both) thrown together over something, some cheating, love, jealousy, funny dialogue, and usually a tragedy to cap things off. Books I recall liking the best: The Black Prince, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, and The Bell. The Bell (an early effort), I vaguely recall liking the best. I couldn't tell you why, though I do recall it being shorter and more to the point, and that at the time I felt I should read more of her earlier novels.

Weirdly, neither of us read her Booker Prize winning The Sea, The Sea. It's a good novel, but a long one. It tells the story (told in the first person) of recently retired actor and theater director Charles Arrowby. Arrowby has recently purchased a strange, vaguely sinister house by the sea. It makes little noises and creaks at night, has a bizarre windowless red room at its center, and no electricity. He has started to settle into the life of recluse. Swimming every day, making simple meals, enjoying the sun, writing his observations of the sea, and recalling bits and pieces of his life, and his previous lovers. One day, while looking at the water, he sees a sea serpent, complete with looping black coils and green eyes, break the surface of the sea.

This event is quite upsetting because it is so concrete and real. Arrowby doesn't know what to make of it, and is reluctant to mention it. In Murdoch's world, all of this stuff (red room, the sea, the serpent, etc.) is saturated with symbolic meaning (and lots of Shakespeare). Still, no reason to get bogged down since Murdoch is a frothy writer who keeps you laughing while she pulls you into something deeper and darker. Arrowby of course has a huge ego, and the serpent is clear warning of the man's raging jealousies, which soon will concentrate on the figure of his long lost and recently rediscovered teenage love, Hartley. Hartely is older, heavier ("bearded" one character calls her) , and married to an unpleasant, probably abusive husband. She's unhappy, but she's also not exactly enthusiastic about meeting Charles again. Even though Charles remembers her as magical and "fey," she remembers Charles as being "bossy." What you think about the novel will probably sink or swim with how you view Charles' obsession with saving Hartely (who he views as a sort of Beatrice), which goes on for a few hundred pages. There are other characters, other dilemmas, spiraling out from Charles' insane pursuit of Hartley, some of them quite funny, some not. But the Hartely thing does wear on you. (Late in the book I felt I might barf if I ever heard her name again.) That said, the story does rally toward the end, with some expected turns involving Charles' mystical cousin, James.

Overall, the novel is something of a meditation on aging and memory. It's interesting that Murdoch, who was in her late 50s when she wrote The Sea, The Sea, was also close to the age of Arrowby (60). This was also interesting for me, at age 58, and my reading, which kept me going through the seemingly endless"Hartley" portion of the novel. (I don't know if my patience would have held out if I was reading back in the 80s.) I'm glad I hung on, because The Sea, The Sea has much more to offer than the "bearded" lady. ...more

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Mar 01, 2019 Fee rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I've had The Sea, The Sea on my radar for a looong time, years and years, mainly because the title stuck in my head and wouldn't budge. Somehow I ended up with a lot of preconceptions about this book but other than really beautiful descriptions of water, none of them were accurate. I think I was expecting something vaguely dreamy and ethereal, but The Sea, The Sea is grounded firmly in reality.

Murdoch does character studies wonderfully. She records almost every detail of the minutiae of life un ...more

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