The Sea

What should be the insufferable, late stage reminiscing of a recently widowed man returning to a childhood haunt is instead a beautifully rendered story that sparkles at every line. This was my first foray into audiobooks and I found myself listening at natural speed to better luxuriate in the language (despite my penchant for 1.5x or faster speeds listening to podcasts)

Our protagonist meanders back and forth across the years recalling childhood crushes, current griefs, and a middling career in-between. This should be as tedious as a garrulous old man sitting next to you at the pub regaling you with shaggy dog stories and teary eyed laments. Indeed nothing seems to happen for most of the book, but Banville manages to captivate with his language.

*3.5 stars. Gorgeous writing. An immersion in grief, loss and the small bits of the every day that shape around the momentous.

Every book doesn't impress on the same place although we take it for granted that they impress upon our feelings. The impression of a book on me is often physical. Some books make my brain fuzzy, some are like deep wounds in my groin, and some are like empty little pockets in my chest. The Sea took my body and broke every bone of it, pulled every muscle.

Since it is a novel, the first question you may ask is, “What is the story?” Well, it doesn't matter. Stories happen all the time and every story is as old as time. Who, and most importantly, how the story is being told is what modern literature is concerned about. When Max, the story-teller here, a self-made man, often vain, mostly sensitive, an intellectual born and brought up in the lower segments of the society tells his story candidly, yet always trying to justify his actions, losses and laughs re-interpreted with the hindsight of a well-aged man, but not entirely coherent— that is not a story anymore. That is life. And life in its most raw form cannot be judged but only be accepted. This acceptance comes with a deep complex sensation, not love, not pity, not hope definitely, but like you're drowning, in the sea.

I think my main takeaway from this book is that I didn't really get it. It is a book about loss, of a man's wife and of a childhood love, but I came to the end with no real sense of what these losses mean. The writing style was very hard to follow at first, moving without transitions between present day, the recent past dealing with the wife's illness, and a variety of memories from the distant childhood. I got used to it about halfway through the book, and the writing itself was evocative, but overall, this wasn't for me.

For me all the expectations were quite high. First of all because of all the high-spirited commentary written on both the back and the front of this book. Second, because it is a winner of the Man-Booker Prize, this usually translates to something I will like.

Not so. The first twenty pages I was somewhat baffled and intrigued by the profound and rich vocabulary John Banville so elaborately brings to the table. Moreover the subtle (and not so subtle) references to the other arts, (ancient) mythology give a sense of depth to a monologue.

This continues to go on and on and on and on like a little riverbed never growing to full width. The fascination with a woman's armpit and the stubble there on I did not find as intriguing as I believe the writer himself. And the memories that might not be accurate, or were they, or no let's go back, style does not appeal to me either.

I was glad to arrive at the end of the book. For one because this meant the end for John Banville to me, but also because the end had a little twist and suddenly found me interested. Still not interested enough to receive more than 2 stars though. Call me a simpleton, or not.

The distant past, the recent past. Max revisits the site of his family summer vacations and recollects. He remembers the people he knew there long ago. He remembers the recent death of his wife. He's a sharp man, and all his memories have a cruel edge.

It's a strong book, a good book, maybe a great book.