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The Sea

by John Banville

November 2006

Synopsis

The Sea "In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredicatble 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." (Publisher)

Winner of the Man Booker Prize

Reviews

"Remarkable...The power and strangeness and piercing beauty of {The Sea} is a wonder." (The Washington Post Book World)
"The Sea offers an extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory. Undeniably brilliant." (USA today)
" A gem...{The Sea} is a presence on every page, its ceaseless undulations echoing constantly in the cadences of the prose. This novel shouldn't simply be read. It needs to be heard, for its sound is intoxicationg. A winning work of art." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Book Club Rating and Comments

Half the people loved it and gave it 4 or 5 stars. The other half didn't care for it and gave it 2 stars. Those who loved it felt the writing was like the sea, serging or ebbing. The narratives about the past were much slower paced than those of the present. Others felt it was just alot of very long run on sentences. You decide. If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.

Other Books by John Banville

Athena
The Book of Evidence
Doctor Copernicus
Eclipse
Ghosts
Kepler
Shroud
The Untouchable