The Sea
by John Banville
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Book Summary Information
Author: John BanvilleReader: John Lee
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2006-08-15
ISBN: 0739333771
Publisher: Random House Audio
Book Reviews of The Sea
Book Review: "There are moments when the past has a force so strong that it seems one might be annihilated by it."
Summary: 5 Stars
In this dramatic reading by John Lee, Booker Prize-winning author John Banville's sensitive and remarkably complete character study of Max Morden comes alive in new ways. An art critic/writer from Ireland whose wife has just died of a lingering illness, Max, seeking solace, has checked into the Cedars, a now-dilapidated guest house in the seaside village of Ballyless, where he and his family spent their summers when he was a child. There he spent hours in the company of Chloe and Myles Grace, his constant companions. Images of foreboding suggest that some tragedy occurred while he was there. While at the Cedars, he contemplates the nature of life, love, and death, and our imperfect memories of these momentous events.
As Max probes his recollections, he reveals his most intimate feelings, constantly questioning the accuracy of his memory, and juxtaposing his childhood memories with his recent memories of his wife Anna's "inappropriate" illness and her futile treatments. Through flashbacks, he also introduces us to his earlier life with Anna and his fervent hopes that through her he could become someone more interesting. "I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone," he says, confessing that he saw her as "the fairground mirror in which all my distortions would be made straight."
The Irish brogue of reader John Lee and his sensitivity to the poetry of Banville's language, with its internal rhyme, its dream-like imagery, and its alliteration, bring the reading to life. More a meditation than a novel with a strong plot, Lee makes Max a fascinating character (as fascinating as a man with a limited life can be), recreating his seemingly simple, yet often profound, thoughts in language which will startle the reader into recognition of their universality. To some extent an everyman, Max speaks to the reader in uniquely intimate ways.
The reading perfectly captures the emotional connotations of Banville's language, his nature imagery, and his revelations of life as a series of paintings. Like the greatest of the Irish story-tellers, Lee has an instinctive sense of when to raise and lower his voice and when to pause for emphasis, adding greatly to the mood and drama. Max Mordern, a "distinct no one," becomes fully human through the voice of this narrator, the "indistinct someone" he so wished to be. n Mary Whipple
Shroud
Eclipse: A Novel
The Untouchable
Ghosts
Summary of The Sea
The author of The Untouchable (?contemporary fiction gets no better than this??Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife?s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child?a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins?Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless?in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the ?barely bearable raw immediacy? of his childhood memories.
Interwoven with this story are Morden?s memories of his wife, Anna?of their life together, of her death?and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him ?like a second heart.?
What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel?among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.
From the Hardcover edition.
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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