Regular marked price: $25.95Discount Price: $17.13
Cost Savings: $8.82 (34%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780307263117
ISBN number: 0307263118
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 208
Printing Date: November 01, 2005
Publishing house: Knopf
Release Date: November 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 58431
Studio: Knopf
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 very 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.
From Amazon.co.uk Review:
Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work.
Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?
The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I have read several books by John Banville, and this one I think could have benefited heavily from some editing. The author seems to enjoy creating prose more than conveying any particular ideas or creating characters. This book seems like a scetch that leaves you with the impression that you almost see a picture, but when you stop to think about it it's just a few rough lines on a page torn out of a notebook.
Rated by buyers 
-
the melody of this book is pure beauty; though the story of incestual love is deeply troubling. the effects of that love can be felt as they pierce through time, silently creating misery for all. though i can't shake the image when i read this book, it is still an excellent read for the images it does evoke and the aesthetic questions it does pose about adult teenage angst.
Rated by buyers 
-
I read the book at a particularly dark time in life, and thus found the author's own sense of self-loathing darkness almost of comfort. I also, suffering from a chronic disease (but no death in sight) am familiar with his expertly described sensation of being alien to the person you love and care for the most: years of togetherness until "news" of death do us apart... But the flashbacks to his earlier love and the sense of both reverence and revilement of his dying cancerous wife left me wanting at times. I was sympathetic then at some point began to feel she needs more development in the book: how she feels, the actions she's taking against this inevitably entirely self-absorbed man. While he says as some point it was her who died, he clearly plunges into the experience as if it's his own leaving her very little breathing room and then finally, none.
Rated by buyers -
John Banville is a crying out loud genius. I am a writer, and this book will carry me through several of my own books on inspiration alone. I have read it four times friom front to back.
Only a consummate genius of spirit, language, and craft could possibly have written this. Reading it requires, I think, an inveterate reader, for its structure is complex. His description of place will take you there and leave you to inhabit the place.
I found it common to read and re-read passages, pages, and, as I said, the entire book it is so beautifully rendered.
The story is touching and real to my inner self, and he is able to paint me, my innermost thoughts, my love for exquisite detail, scene, memories, and people with such solid and true foundation that humanity within me was discovered, illuminated, and honored.
Blue? Lost? Afraid? Grieving? Satisfied with your lot? Think humanity has gone sadly astray? Read this book. I swear you will never forget it.
Rated by buyers -
This is a very rewarding book that requires patience and close attention because of the narrative shifts in time and place.
The story revolves around middle aged Max. In the present, Max is grappling with the recent death of his wife. Clearly the pair had long been a "unit" and Max is quite at loss as to what to do subsequent in her absence. Although he loves his adult daughter Claire, she is no substitute in his affection. So Max is drawn back to a place by the shore that he hadn't been for 50 years, a place where he has a typical early adolesent experience with the opposite sex and an untypical experience with tragedy. The past and present are expertly interwoven by Mr. Banville, who deservedly won his Booker for this effort.
Banville does an incredibly good job showing us the power and limits of memory and how things are remembered (or disremembered) lucidly or poorly.
I think only Ian McEwan yesterday writes with quite the same degree of elegance. And actually, as I think about it, I could make an argument that there are interesting similarities between McEwan's "Atonement" and "The Sea". In each case, the narrator sees or thinks they see something that turns out not to be the case and, in each instance, with terrible consequences; although more obviously so in "Atonement".
Read it "The Sea" and see for yourself.
Find other books like this one:
