At Sea

Sometimes an author's, or an artist's, work touches us deeply in a way that we cannot explain, but our affinity is palpable. The 2005 Booker Prize winning novel The Sea by John Banville is one of the works which seems to have touched many readers, but left others unmoved.

The story develops amidst the reminiscences of a bereaved widower as he tries to come to terms with his life and the death of his wife, and work through its connection with his coming of age experiences and tragedy in a seaside resort town involving a larger than life family of four and their governess. He rents a room in the resort home occupied by the Grace family in his youth, now a boarding house, and goes adrift on a storm of remembering. He has a life and death struggle against the maelstrom of grief and tries to forget by diving into alcohol abuse. The tide turns when he has a near death experience and is saved by another boarder. Missing links in the story are neatly replaced and eventually he gains a foothold and moves on.

The settings are beautifully presented and universally evocative. He successfully describes settings with which we could all identify. The characters are drawn in vivid detail involving all the senses. The language is rich with allusion. The vocabulary exercised all of ours. Descriptions often used metaphor, personification or anthropomorphism. The sea is an ever present leitmotif against which and on which the author drifts.

In the words of Krysia Bell: Like several of his other books which deal with death and bereavement the narrator, a bad tempered, egotistical, intolerant, inebriate speaks openly and honestly about his feelings even to the point of uncomfortable rawness. But concedes that she would quite happily spend hours with a dictionary by my side reading about ‘every detail of every smell in every room’ as long as it was written by John Banville.

Margaret Moore emphasized the apparent mythological references citing Diana and Apollo, Demeter, an Edenic moment being offered an apple, like Eve the temptress, and the siren's song...he is Ulysses, as we all are, on a seemingly endless journey.

Some readers were very moved either by the language or the story itself. One either connected with it or not, there was little middle ground.

Thank you once again to Krysia for most gracious hosting and to everyone who contributed in all ways. We will meet again at Krysia’s on the 16th of February to discuss Engelby by Sebastian Faulks. (This is a change from our agreed upon date and book.)

We look forward to seeing you there,

Kerry