The Sea

Sometimes I read for pleasure, sometimes I read for edification. It is a happy day when a book provides both. John Banville's The Sea is one of the books that falls more squarely in the latter category for me. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but reading it is more like an exercise in the appreciation of good writing as opposed to hanging on the edge of your seat as the plot unfolds. Banville's prose is incredibly well-written, but can be dense. It wanders as the mind will wander, often going off on tangents, but usually ending up where it needs to.

The Sea is about a man, Max Morden, who has lost his wife to cancer. As part of his grieving process, he revisits a seaside resort where he spent a few eventful summers during his youth. He is clearly searching for something that he feels he lost along the way, or maybe never had in the first place. By his own admission, he is less than driven in his career as an art historian, and has coasted comfortably through his life on the wealth of his wife.

At the resort, Max is haunted by his memories of the Graces, an upper class family with children his own age who represent to him all of the possibilities that seem to be out of his grasp. His interactions with them lead to events that will change both Max and the Grace family.

The Sea is a reflective book, and reading it it is hard not to become reflective oneself. All of the tiny slights, humiliations, triumphs, and decisions a person makes somehow turn cumulative with time, and this beautifully written book forces the reader to examine him or herself. It is not always easy going, but it is rewarding.