Book of the Week

The Sea by John Banville

Recommended by Sasha Georget-Roukline

The Sea is a hauntingly introspective novel; Banville transports us to the foggy memories and twisted corridors of Max Morden’s inner psyche, exploring grief, the grip of the past and the complexity of remembrance. Winner of the 2005 Booker Prize, Banville showcases his masterful control of prose, indulging in lyrical and rich language at the melancholic rhythm of Morden’s narration.

A recently widowed art historian, he returns to the seaside village of his childhood vacations in order to confront and rediscover the traumas of his past. An anonymous coastal town, it becomes alive in both Morden’s present and in his memories, a character in its own right that embodies the untamed and dangerous beauty of the sea. 

Banville’s prose is dense and complex; anecdotes of the past are confused with thoughts and biases of the present, and as Morden embarks on his journey through memory he drifts in and out of his history. As details and strands of narrative are revealed, we learn more of his troubled past, of his childhood fascination with the peculiar Grace family, of the themes of loneliness, or the other characters that pass through his life, but we are never sure if we are seeing what really happened, or just a shadow of it, coloured by his more recent grief and loss. This is what makes the book so fascinating, this constant sense of ambiguity and mystery pervading all the descriptions, all the characters and their moves.

For some, however, this may prove difficult and laborious. The novel advances at a rambling pace, and at times it feels as if you are having to grasp at the various strands of plot that seem to try and escape you at every corner. Banville is more concerned with creating an image of the workings of Morden’s mind, an atmosphere of morbid rumination. It is easy to lose yourself in Morden’s digressive narration; his often intellectual and even pretentious deliberations might leave you feeling distanced from and unsympathetic towards the voice of the novel. Banville offers an experience to be savoured rather than a story to be gripped by.

The Sea is a long meditation on the relationship of the past to the present. Reading it is somewhat like watching the waves lapping at the shore, the words ebbing and flowing along the pages. It is a book which leaves an echoing impression.