The Sea

Synopsis: When art historian Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family had appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. Mr and Mrs Grace, with their worldly ease and candour, were unlike any adults he had met before. But it was his contemporaries, the Grace twins Myles and Chloe, who most fascinated Max. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately, and what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years and shape everything that was to follow. 'A novel in which all of his remarkable gifts come together to produce a real work of art, disquieting, beautiful, intelligent, and in the end, surprisingly, offering consolation' - Allan Massie, "Scotsman". 'You can smell and feel and see his world with extraordinary clarity. It is a work of art, and I'll bet it will still be read and admired in seventy-five years' - Rick Gekoski, "The Times". 'Poetry seems to come easily to Banville. There is so much to applaud in this book that it deserves more than one reading' - "Literary Review". 'A brilliant, sensuous, discombobulating novel' - "Spectator".

Review: This is something special. John Banville's prose is so beautifully rich and descriptive that it's a pleasure to immerse yourself both in it and the imagery that it conjures up. Although it's quite poetic, nothing is wasted or superfluous and just as you're getting comfortable, he intersperses his writing with an occasional shock like smelling salts which give you a jolt.

'They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. All morning under a milky sky the waters in the bay had swelled and swelled, rising to unheard-of heights, the small waves creeping over parched sand that for years had known no wetting save for rain and lapping the very bases of the dunes. The rusted hulk of the freighter that had run aground at the far end of the bay longer ago than any of us could remember must have thought it was being granted a relaunch. I would not swim again, after that day. The seabirds mewled and swooped, unnerved, it seemed, by the spectacle of that vast bowl of water bulging like a blister, lead-blue and malignantly agleam. They looked unnaturally white, that day, those birds. The waves were depositing a fringe of soiled yellow foam along the waterline. No sail marred the high horizon. I would not swim, no, not ever again.
Someone has just walked over my grave. Someone.'

The story concerns ageing art historian Max. He's at a crossroads in his life, following the death of his wife and this prompts his decision to move back to the idyllic seaside village where he used to holiday as a child. In particular he is lodging at a house where he once was a welcome guest of the enigmatic Grace family. There's a lot of mysteriousness surrounding his return, all we know is that 'something happened there' previously but of course we don't find out what until near the end.

The Grace's are a fascinating bunch, they're the sort of family that one envies, effortlessly interesting and vibrant. Max, whose own family are a bit more mundane and ordinary, is desperate to become familiar with them. At first it is Mrs Grace that attracts him, but then he becomes infatuated with her daughter Chloe (with her smell of stale biscuits, the blonde comma of hair at the nape of her neck and the hairline cracks in the porcelain backs of her knees.) Chloe has a twin, Myles ..'like two magnets, but turned the wrong way, pulling and pushing' .. a web footed mute boy who communicates by gestures, noises and clicks which are perfectly understood by Chloe. He's rather odd and unsettling.

The storyline ebbs and flows quite slowly, Max wanders between the now, the lately and the long ago but his narration is not always reliable .. things we take as gospel are later retracted or altered, some of this is down to Max's memory which has become dulled over the years. Gradually we piece together his narration and begin to make sense of it. I don't think this style of writing will be for everyone, some people may find it slow paced or too poetic and there are times when you'll need a dictionary to hand (or at least I did ... what on earth do 'cinereal' and 'flocculent' mean?) but I thought it was pretty wonderful. It's haunting, melancholy and darkly humorous. In a nutshell, it's an old man's rather sad recollections. A wonderfully evocative and atmospheric tale of the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of death. It's another one crossed off of the '1001' (hooray) ... and very enjoyably too.