The sea

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English

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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.

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Contributors
Banville, John Author
Lee, John Narrator
ISBN
9781400097029
9780307263117
9781415947654
9780307429308

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Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Both Akin and The Sea feature aging protagonists who travel and are thrust into unlikely friendships that further their understandings of the past. The Sea takes a more character-focused approach, but these stylistically complex novels share many themes in common. -- Michael Jenkins
First loves and shocking deaths haunt older men reflecting on their lives in these leisurely, complex literary novels, which ruminate on the roles of story and history in the way we perceive our pasts. -- Melissa Gray
Although the settings are quite different, the main character of each novel faces unexpected loss and grief. The Changeling focuses on a friend's suicide, while The Sea focuses on a man's loss of his wife. -- Katherine Johnson
Despite relocating (to rural Alaska in Unpassing; the English seaside in Sea) past tragedies haunt the complex and broken characters in these leisurely paced, descriptive, and lyrical novels. The Sea has a reflective tone while The Unpassing is more bleak. -- Alicia Cavitt
Men reeling in the wake of tragic losses reflect on their grief and past actions in these haunting literary novels. Both books are melancholy, character-driven and stylistically complex, but the prose in The Sea is more lyrical. -- Catherine Coles
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Men rendered helpless by grief are at the center of these gorgeously written novels. A keen sense of loss pervades both, but while The Sea takes place in modern-day England, Train Dreams is set in the American West of the early 20th century. -- Victoria Fredrick
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These books have the appeal factors reflective, haunting, and lyrical, and they have the theme "coping with death"; the genres "psychological fiction" and "literary fiction"; the subjects "widowers," "memories," and "loss"; and characters that are "complex characters."
In these character-driven novels, middle-aged men grieve the deaths of their wives. While both portray the grieving process at a leisurely pace, The Beginner's Goodbye is often humorously quirky while The Sea is more meditative and profound. -- Shauna Griffin
In these layered, character-driven meditations on memory, mortality, and the loss of innocence, an aging narrator provides a possibly unreliable account of past events and present-day consequences. -- NoveList Contributor
Readers who enjoy lyrical and descriptive language, introspective characters, and meditations on how the past affects the present may enjoy both Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and John Banville's The Sea. -- Victoria Fredrick

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These literary authors' exquisite prose style vividly depicts external surroundings while delving into their characters' psyches. Banville's tales tend to be more haunting, even disturbing, than Robinson's, but both approach darker aspects of human nature with realism. -- Katherine Johnson
John Banville and Paul Harding write haunting, thought-provoking literary fiction. Their lyrical prose combines sharp description with leisurely reflection, prying beneath the surface of things to reveal hidden connections and stark truths. Both authors create memorable, complex characters who are by turns charming, troubling, and enigmatic. -- Mike Nilsson
John Banville and Kazuo Ishiguro are contemplative writers, creators of literary fiction that's evocative, thought-provoking, and entirely unsettling. Both feature nuanced characters who find themselves involved in situations beyond their understanding or control. The mutability of art, music, and loss figure prominently in their combined works. -- Mike Nilsson
Chloe Aridjis and John Banville both create ruminative, atmospheric, slightly surreal psychological fiction. Their protagonists often experience existential crises -- boredom, aging, death -- that send them back home or away from home, journeys that result in unstinting self-examination. Both writers are character-driven, leisurely paced, and thought-provoking. -- Mike Nilsson
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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Winner of the 2005 Booker Prize for Fiction, Irishman Banville's new book does more than simply explore a0 life. It explores life0 . This splendidly profound and beautifully written novel offers lessons aplenty about how the shadow of the past does not necessarily cast darkness over the present but certainly leaves its imprint. That situation is true even in late middle age, as shown here, when Max, after losing his wife to cancer, answers an enigmatic (to himself) urge to return to the seaside resort that had been the site of summer vacations in his childhood. He wants especially to remember the "time of the gods": that summer in his adolescence when the Grace family was also in summer residence. In a monologue punctuated by exquisite metaphors borne on raw emotion, Max circles through time--through memory--to seek an understanding of not only that summer but also his subsequent adult life. Max's initial--and juvenile--passion for Mrs. Grace was, as the summer progressed, transferred to her daughter, Chloe, and almost as if prescribed by young Max's admission into the world of the "divinities," the season comes to involve a horrible tragedy. As Max's present-day retreat from real life back to the place where strong memories were made draws to a necessary close, it occurs to him that "the past . . . matters less than we pretend." In a word, this novel is brilliant. 0 --Brad Hooper Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Lee's thrillingly resonant baritone makes Banville's poetic evocation of the brooding Max Morden even more absorbing. As the story oscillates between two pivotal times in Morden's life-the strange events of a boyhood summer by the sea in Ireland, and the illness and death of his wife half a century later-Banville makes Morden's world fully rounded with endlessly intricate thoughts and perceptions. The lyrical writing, full of half-rhymes and alliteration, blossoms even more beautifully in the audio version than on the page, and Lee has a great sense for the material, varying his tone from sonorous heights to sing-songy to wistful sighs. Whether quickening with young Morden's naive lust for the mother in the tragic Grace family who he encounters at the beach, or growing heavy with the memory of his wife's helplessness at her cancer diagnosis, Lee convincingly inhabits the character. His Irish accent adds authenticity without distracting from the prose, though some listeners may find Banville's daunting vocabulary more of a challenge to keep up with on audio. The absence of chapter breaks and the minimal dialogue helps Lee's voice gather force as he reads, becoming a powerful wave that bears the listener along, a privileged vantage from which to witness the riveting spectacle of Morden baring his soul. Simultaneous release with the Vintage paperback (Reviews, Nov. 7, 2005). (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Library Journal Review

"I have carried the memory of that moment through a whole half century, as if it were the emblem of something final, precious and irretrievable," says the narrator of Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel of a relatively trivial moment. But when he recalls the mother and daughter whom he first loved as a barely pubescent child-whose presence pulled him out of the shadow of his paltry self-he observes, "The two figures in the scene, I mean Chloe and her mother, are all my own work." Memory, then, is the subject of this brief but magisterial work, a condensed teardrop of a novel that captures perfectly the essence of irretrievable longing. After the death of his wife, Max has retreated to the seashore where he spent his childhood summers, staying at an inn that was once the home of a magnificent, careless family called the Graces. It's as if reawakening the pain of his first, terrible loss-that high-strung and volatile Chloe-will ease his more recent loss. The novel is written in a complex, luminous prose that might strike some as occasionally overblown, and Chloe's final act didn't entirely persuade this reviewer. The result? A breathtaking but sometimes frustrating novel. Highly recommended.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Booklist Reviews

/*Starred Review*/ Winner of the 2005 Booker Prize for Fiction, Irishman Banville's new book does more than simply explore a life. It explores life. This splendidly profound and beautifully written novel offers lessons aplenty about how the shadow of the past does not necessarily cast darkness over the present but certainly leaves its imprint. That situation is true even in late middle age, as shown here, when Max, after losing his wife to cancer, answers an enigmatic (to himself) urge to return to the seaside resort that had been the site of summer vacations in his childhood. He wants especially to remember the "time of the gods": that summer in his adolescence when the Grace family was also in summer residence. In a monologue punctuated by exquisite metaphors borne on raw emotion, Max circles through time--through memory--to seek an understanding of not only that summer but also his subsequent adult life. Max's initial--and juvenile--passion for Mrs. Grace was, as the summer progressed, transferred to her daughter, Chloe, and almost as if prescribed by young Max's admission into the world of the "divinities," the season comes to involve a horrible tragedy. As Max's present-day retreat from real life back to the place where strong memories were made draws to a necessary close, it occurs to him that "the past . . . matters less than we pretend." In a word, this novel is brilliant. ((Reviewed November 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

"I have carried the memory of that moment through a whole half century, as if it were the emblem of something final, precious and irretrievable," says the narrator of Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel of a relatively trivial moment. But when he recalls the mother and daughter whom he first loved as a barely pubescent child--whose presence pulled him out of the shadow of his paltry self--he observes, "The two figures in the scene, I mean Chloe and her mother, are all my own work." Memory, then, is the subject of this brief but magisterial work, a condensed teardrop of a novel that captures perfectly the essence of irretrievable longing. After the death of his wife, Max has retreated to the seashore where he spent his childhood summers, staying at an inn that was once the home of a magnificent, careless family called the Graces. It's as if reawakening the pain of his first, terrible loss--that high-strung and volatile Chloe--will ease his more recent loss. The novel is written in a complex, luminous prose that might strike some as occasionally overblown, and Chloe's final act didn't entirely persuade this reviewer. The result? A breathtaking but sometimes frustrating novel. Highly recommended.--Barbara Hoffert,Library Journal

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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Banville's magnificent new novel, which won this year's Man Booker Prize and is being rushed into print by Knopf, presents a man mourning his wife's recent death--and his blighted life. "The past beats inside me like a second heart," observes Max Morden early on, and his return to the seaside resort where he lost his innocence gradually yields the objects of his nostalgia. Max's thoughts glide swiftly between the events of his wife's final illness and the formative summer, 50 years past, when the Grace family--father, mother and twins Chloe and Myles--lived in a villa in the seaside town where Max and his quarreling parents rented a dismal "chalet." Banville seamlessly juxtaposes Max's youth and age, and each scene is rendered with the intense visual acuity of a photograph ("the mud shone blue as a new bruise"). As in all Banville novels, things are not what they seem. Max's cruelly capricious complicity in the sad history that unfolds, and the facts kept hidden from the reader until the shocking denouement, brilliantly dramatize the unpredictability of life and the incomprehensibility of death. Like the strange high tide that figures into Max's visions and remembrances, this novel sweeps the reader into the inexorable waxing and waning of life. (Nov. 8)

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