Book Review: The Sea, by John Banville

One-line summary: A middle-aged Irishman returns to the scene of his childhood to remember the only important thing that ever happened in his life and get drunk.



Knopf, 2005, 195 pages

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 experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

( If you are not entirely convinced that there's a difference between 'literary' fiction and 'genre' fiction, if you're not sure what a 'literary' novel is? This book. If there is a line between 'literary' and 'genre' fiction, this book is way far over on the 'literary' side of that line. A SEA OF TEAL DEER below the cut. )

Verdict: Beautiful writing displaying mastery of the prose of human feelings and the picturesque in the mundane, but The Sea is full of characters you can't love and tells a story that's thin and all bound up in the last twenty pages. If you luuuuuurve capital-L Literary Fiction then definitely read this, but I am not sure this is the best book with which to be introduced to John Banville.

This was my fourth review for the books1001 challenge. We're up to 38 reviews out of 1001; come check out the other reviews, and help us read 1001 books by the end of the year!

Book Review: The Sea, by John Banville

One-line summary: A middle-aged Irishman returns to the scene of his childhood to remember the only important thing that ever happened in his life and get drunk.



Knopf, 2005, 195 pages

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 experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

( If you are not entirely convinced that there's a difference between 'literary' fiction and 'genre' fiction, if you're not sure what a 'literary' novel is? This book. If there is a line between 'literary' and 'genre' fiction, this book is way far over on the 'literary' side of that line. A SEA OF TEAL DEER below the cut. )

Verdict: Beautiful writing displaying mastery of the prose of human feelings and the picturesque in the mundane, but The Sea is full of characters you can't love and tells a story that's thin and all bound up in the last twenty pages. If you luuuuuurve capital-L Literary Fiction then definitely read this, but I am not sure this is the best book with which to be introduced to John Banville.

This was my fourth review for the books1001 challenge. We're up to 38 reviews out of 1001; come check out the other reviews, and help us read 1001 books by the end of the year!