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“A piece of violent poetry—an autumnal, elegiac novel whose desolate story is carried along by the sweet and stormy tides of its . . . magnificent prose. . . . Treacherously smart and haunting.” —The Boston Globe
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of John Banvilles The Sea, winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize.
sentina, July 22, 2012 (view all comments by sentina)
I don't know if it is because the book is not in American English, or if it is because the author is from a different educational class, but there were at least 175 words in this book that I did not know, such as ziggurat, revenant, velutinous, and ichor. This detracted from the reading for me. It just seemed like he was trying too hard to be poetic or profound, but failed because of this.
The lack of commas where they should be, creating run on sentences, occur often enough to be annoying to me.
The most interesting part to me was the way sudden memories would intrude into the narrator's mind in the middle of another train of thought, the way that remembered images do, and the detail with which they are described.
Not much to this book; not very moving emotionally. Very self-absorbed, and a lot of alcoholism.
sentina, July 22, 2012 (view all comments by sentina)
I don't know if it is because the book is not in American English, or if it is because the author is from a different educational class, but there were at least 175 words in this book that I did not know, such as ziggurat, revenant, velutinous, and ichor. This detracted from the reading for me. It just seemed like he was trying too hard to be poetic or profound, but failed because of this.
The lack of commas where they should be, creating run on sentences, occur often enough to be annoying to me.
The most interesting part to me was the way sudden memories would intrude into the narrator's mind in the middle of another train of thought, the way that remembered images do, and the detail with which they are described.
Not much to this book; not very moving emotionally. Very self-absorbed, and a lot of alcoholism.
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Heather Thayer, August 25, 2010 (view all comments by Heather Thayer)
Unbelievably self-absorbed and boring. The writing is self-consciously cloying -- "oh, look at me, I am trying for a Booker prize," with ten words where two would have done. The meaning is obscured by the overly stylized writing and superimposed Ominous Meaning. If there was a story (or a point), it was lost in all of the posturing and "oh look, I am poetic" meanderings. I sent sentences from this book to friends as a joke. I think the only reason this won the prize is that the Committee couldn't understand what it was reading, but it sounded important.
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Product details
208 pages
Vintage Books USA -
English9781400097029
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Ann E.,
Banville's fluid prose glides over the pages of The Sea, a rich story filled with heart and bittersweet longing. I pored over the luminescent descriptions of time and place and the beautiful characters that make up this world. Clearly the Man Booker was well deserved.
by Ann E.
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Banville's magnificent new novel, which won this year's Man Booker Prize and is being rushed into print by Knopf, presents a man mourning his wife's recent death-and his blighted life. 'The past beats inside me like a second heart,' observes Max Morden early on, and his return to the seaside resort where he lost his innocence gradually yields the objects of his nostalgia. Max's thoughts glide swiftly between the events of his wife's final illness and the formative summer, 50 years past, when the Grace family-father, mother and twins Chloe and Myles-lived in a villa in the seaside town where Max and his quarreling parents rented a dismal 'chalet.' Banville seamlessly juxtaposes Max's youth and age, and each scene is rendered with the intense visual acuity of a photograph ('the mud shone blue as a new bruise'). As in all Banville novels, things are not what they seem. Max's cruelly capricious complicity in the sad history that unfolds, and the facts kept hidden from the reader until the shocking denouement, brilliantly dramatize the unpredictability of life and the incomprehensibility of death. Like the strange high tide that figures into Max's visions and remembrances, this novel sweeps the reader into the inexorable waxing and waning of life." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by The Independent on Sunday,
"A peculiar and profound satisfaction comes from experiencing the prose of John Banville. Like some aged liquor, potent and malty, his writing demands to be imbibed in appreciative sips, little by little."
"Review"
by Oregonian,
"Unlike so many novels, I was forced to read with the dictionary at my side. The Sea satisfies because it gives the reader...a rigorous workout."
"Review"
by Denver Post,
"What The Sea offers in abundance is beautiful writing."
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
"They say no critic can write great fiction, and certainly great critics have produced some conspicuously failed novels. But a great novelist can turn even a critic...into a compelling protagonist."
"Review"
by Boston Globe,
"[T]reacherously smart, and haunting...its story of a ravaged self in search of a reason to go on is cloaked in wave after wave of magnificent but hardly consoling prose."
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