The Sea

By: John Banville

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

The author of The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.

The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy” of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.”

What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.

©2005 John Banville (P)2006 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Remarkable. . . . The power and strangeness and piercing beauty of [The Sea is] a wonder.” —The Washington Post Book World

“With his fastidious wit and exquisite style, John Banville is the heir to Nabokov. . . . The Sea [is] his best novel so far.” —The Sunday Telegraph

“A gem. . . . [The sea] is a presence on every page, its ceaseless undulations echoing constantly in the cadences of the prose. This novel shouldn't simply be read. It needs to be heard, for its sound is intoxicating. . . . A winning work of art.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

I have NO idea

why this book won the Booker prize, or why it was even considered for it. I’m sorry I wasted a credit on it.

Great book, horrible narration

I loved this book, but found the audio version difficult to listen to. The narrator had an overbearing style that interferred with the flow of the beautifully crafted sentences. He seemed to think that his own performance was more important to the text.

The Sea - an Unabridged Yawn

This book was slow and boring. I do not recommend it while driving -- the reader will definitely put you to sleep.

Depressing

After an hour and a half of listening, I am thoroughly depressed. Although the narrator tries to make something of what he is reading, it is very tiresome. Is it a sad past he is remembering? I cannot tell. I am still waiting for the actual storyline. I will probably not continue listening to this story.

the narration really didn't work for me.

I tried to get through this, but the narration put me off somehow. Disappointed, as I was really looking forward to this.

I didn’t care for it.

The readers accent was so strong, I found it hard to follow. It is rare for me to not like an Audible book.

A muddy stream.. of consciousness

OK first John Lee can read a phone book and it would be worth listeng to. This tale is about a person who spends time at THE SEASHORE, not at sea. He has a troubled tragic life and time and remembers it all with you as he writes this. He does not however remember it in any logical form but rather changes time and characters extensively. This left me as the reader lost to figure out what was what and when it all happened. This detracted from whatever story he was trying to tell. In movie form you might have visual cues as to where the pieces of his life fit together but I didn't like it here. Now you may say that I have no appreciation for his artfull stream of consciousness and rich descriptive language. The former no the latter yes.

Difficult to follow

Maybe it's just me, as I had read such positive reviews about this book. But I have had to restart this audio book countless times, as I found the story line difficult to follow.. At times you are not immediately aware that the author had jumped back several decades to the subject's childhood, or to his marriage or to the present day. It was well read however, enjoyed the narrator's Irish accent.