I am always amazed by how much an author can fit into one small book. How many ideas or images or feelings. John Banville's The Sea deserves a second reading. I am very ambivalent about this book, however. Truthfully I did not like the narrator, Max Morden. As the story went on I even began to dislike him more. Did the ending redeem him in my mind? I guess it made him more human at least. There were a couple of twists at the end, which I am not entirely sure what to make of. This book is beautifully written though, and for that reason I would like to reread it. Not the least for all the references he makes to the artist Bonnard. Apparently there were also references to Shakespeare, Proust and a few other artists as well, which I either missed or just read over without making much note of.
This happens to be one of the 1001 books included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I like what the editor had to say about it in the brief essay about the book:
"Banville's prose often has something of the miraculous to it, and the miracle here is its capacity to use words to produce images, to find beneath the constant movement of the everyday, an attitude, or glance, or shape that seems suddenly, magically present. The novel depicts the ugliness of death and of bodily decrepitude, as it conjures the experience of loss with an uncanny intensity. But if this novel is about death and the steady humiliation of dying, it is more than anything about the power of memory, and of art, to catch at something that doesn't die, something as immune to death as innocence."
Banville manages to seamlessly venture from the past to the present. While he does use a lot of words that I was unfamiliar with, the prose didn't feel choppy. This is my first experience reading Banville. I am not sure if this is typical of his work or not. Do authors write like this consciously--to set themselves apart from the reader, or it is just normal? I am not a writer, so I am not sure how much just comes naturally and how much is written with the desire to (sorry, for lack of a better way of saying it) show off. Of course some of this is just my perception as a reader and what I am bringing to the book. Perhaps a second read will clarify what I feel. I am not really giving you a very good review, but so much as been written about it, I don't feel I can say anything new and enlightening. It is a thoughtful book, though, and I do recommend it.