About this title: Max Morden is an aging art historian whose wife has recently died of cancer. In his grief, he takes a trip to the seaside, to the "rubble of the past," where he and his family spent holidays as a child. Here grief and memory coincide as he ponders not only his wife's death, but the drowning of two childhood friends, and, in the end, he finds that memory has the power to redeem him. THE SEA won the Mann Booker Prize in 2005.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400097029ISBN:1400097029
Description: Acceptable. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust cover may be missing). Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781400097029ISBN:1400097029
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges and may have creases. read more
Description: Good. 0307263118 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 1400097029 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0307263118 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"I hated this book and actually threw it away before finishing it. It's the story of a man dealing with the grief process who returns to the summer vacation spot of his childhood. He went through his adolescence here and the book explores his thinking. As young men are wanton to be, it tended to be very sexualized, and I didn't like that at all. Perhaps that is my view as a woman, perhaps it is as an Evangelical Christian. In any event, I really didn't like it at all. Perhaps a man would have a different experience with the story."
"My first Banville novel. It is very playfully written, twists and turns around place and identity, and is deeply moving. It is a meditation on loss, death and the sea of indifferent time. Also the real sea, a real place, and real people who seem more real to the narrator than he can ever feel himself to be. Max Morden, windowed, drinking heavily and very lonely retires to a somewhat shabby guesthouse that was the centre of events in his childhood. Set among an equally shabby Irish resort, in winds and seasons that seem to blow around like memories, though it is more often than not gray and raining, Morden is a minor art critic supposedly writing a second rate book about Pierre Bonnard. As art and vision are thematically crucial to the meditative imagery of recollection, the author has the opportunity to write a most beautiful closely observed prose that is doubly 'filmic' in that it is extraordinarily detailed and bright (especially the dark parts), and in that it is 'filmy' like insubstantial, and shifting, and alwways between borders of heavy reality and image without body. Yet the ending stunned me physically. It is ingenious, and just as I was going off into a filmy trance into oblivion, I was given what to me felt like a physical jolt. Brilliant."
"An exquisitely well crafted novel. Banville has indeed inherited the talent and wit of Nabokov.
The Sea is the story of a middle aged man who returns to a sea-side town he knew as a child after the death of his wife. There he revisits and relives the relationships and experiences of his childhood, and confronts the often gloomy reality of his present.
A vivid and stylistically beautiful novel. Banville will forever be remembered for this work."
"I can honestly say that I gave this book everything I had and it was far from enough. I read to exactly halfway then allowed myself the freedom to shut it quickly. I did prevent myself from spitting on it, or burning it. Which wouldn't have been good since it is rented from the library. *smirks*
This is my first attempt at reading off the 1001 books you must read before you die list. I will try again at some point. But right now I feel I just must not be on the same level of literary genius as some of the people in that group that sing praises on this book.
It would seem to me that this guy writes in one long run on sentence. That he has ADHD and can't stay on a subject for more than one minute. He would start a thought then jump to multiple pages of side stories before he got back to the conclusion of his original thought.
I couldn't stand his in depth description of every single little thing. It was mind grueling. Often leaving my head aching. It took me four days to read 100 pages. I just couldn't wait to put it down each time I picked it up. Like it was somehow an opposing magnet to my mind.
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