You’ve built a cage of needs and installed her in an empty space in the middle… using her image… as an exorcism.” The main character is a recently retired actor/playwright/theater director. He was a so-so actor, a better playwright, but a masterful director. In the last endeavor he achieved fame and made his money. Yet, he discovers that silence has been his companion his whole life. He knows and understands it like he has never known and understood anybody, including himself.

The smell in the hall was like the smell of my breath when I breathed and rebreathed it into my cupped hands.”There is a formula, which fits painting perfectly," wrote Bonnard, "many little lies to create a great truth." But Avril, now. Who in these parts would have conferred on their child a name so delicately vernal? All the protagonists in the books mentioned above have one thing in common: lonely old men who are unable to voice their feelings and talk about their hurt and sadness. Misunderstood, they are, and often curmudgeon as a result. The sand around me with the sun strong on it gave off its mysterious, catty smell. Out on the bay a white sail shivered and flipped to leeward and for a second the world tilted. Someone away down the beach was calling to someone else. Children. Bathers. A wire-haired ginger dog. The sail turned to windward again and I heard distinctly from across the water the ruffle and snap of the canvas. Then the breeze dropped and for a moment all went still. Then remember or imagine touches: the shrill blast of a strong salt sea breeze on your face, stroking the soft silky fur of a cat, the abrasion of warm, wet, sand between your toes.

The narrative is full of associations and diversions, showing the power (and unreliability) of memory Drowning in the grief which comes with the vast and ruthless sea of loss, he decides to seclude himself in the little coastal village where he spent his summers as a boy. A flood of unavoidable memories charged with haunted emotion and digressive meditations recreate that dreamy atmosphere that only childhood can nurture. New found memories which serve to wash away his conflicting emotions between the impotence of witnessing life quietly fading away and the cruel complacency of ordinary things allowing death to happen indifferently. Those more learned and enthused than I am can consider the symbolism of the serpent, the inner room, the broken mirror, and many nods to theatre, Shakespeare (Prospero, in The Tempest), and classical mythology (Perseus and Andromeda, Orpheus and Euridice, Plato’s cave), and whether freedom can be imposed. In addition: The Godhead for me was a menace, and I responded with fear and its inevitable concomitant, guilt.” But that’s as a child.

As the gusts of past hurl at the present, heavy boulders of questions, flanked by incredulity and guilt, the present retaliates with a torrid shower of indifference and futility, armed with occasional pelting of tranquil hailstones. The crystal clear mirror that his life had become was merciless in throwing his reflections which neither seemed to fit the past mantle nor could adorn the present portico. But despite such denouncement, Morden keeps the mirror in utmost care, as if his life depended on it. And that is no surprise. Charles Arrowby is a playwright, actor, and director who, in his sixties, retires to a remote coastal cottage - though he’s probably not as successful as he’d like readers to believe: He spends his time writing a memoir that is a kind of diary and autobiography mixed in with copies of letters he sent or received; basically that is this book. Of course, we can’t trust this unreliable narrator; even he tells us his letters are “partly disingenuous, partly sincere.” The journal he writes, and which we are reading, is an attempt to form some structure to his life, and to be a memoir of sorts. But even though he professes to be writing details of the house and village, he seems to find it impossible to concentrate on the job he has set himself, which he says is the reason for being there in the first place. He becomes distracted inordinately easily; even the food he prepares is an excuse. He rambles on about his culinary activities - both past and present, Like many of Murdoch’s characters Arrowby is not very likeable and seems completely oblivious to the mayhem he creates among his nearest and dearest. I also found myself increasingly irritated by what he did with food (nothing kinky here!); if Murdoch meant him to be annoying, she wrote him very well. There is moral complexity and ambiguity as Arrowby tries to recapture his first love (literally). The cast of secondary characters are strong and are not there for mere ornament. Cousin James is an interesting counterpoint to Arrowby.

There’s little tension in this novel, no compulsion. It all hinges on what’s essentially a moment of melodrama which didn’t ring true for me. Neither did it explain anything. There are good things, like the descriptions of his childhood crush on his friend’s mother and his dying wife and his response, though once again Banville can’t resist his misanthropic form of dark humour which consistently puts his character in the worst possible light – ironic as he’s always waxing lyrical in the book about the transfiguring nature of light. An amazing book that my class loved... It's beautifully illustrated and an excellent non fiction book. Will be recommending to other teaching colleagues!" Toppsta How much of life is exactly that? Obsession and invention. How often in life do we substitute our realities, our possibilities, for dreams, which are unreachable? Is it worth anything to us if we recognize the truth of love when life is all but done? And how much like the ever-changing, unfeeling, often cruel sea, is life? Charles romanticizes both, and plays a dangerous game with both, and each of us must decide for himself if the price Charles pays is worth the knowledge he gleans. The Sea” is a brilliant study of Max who, after recently losing his wife, flees to a time in his boyhood when the innocence of youth was dealt an unspeakable blow by real life. The storyline is a good one, I did not see the twist at the end the first time out. It is Banville’s writing, though, that sets this apart. He makes the sea a heavy presence, a foreboding character holding secrets, regrets, memories. I stumbled along with Max, screamed with him, and felt his anguish in my soul. We struggled to find… whatever it is we search to find in these circumstances. Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it” proclaims Max Morten, narrator and main character of The Sea, after his wife Anna passes away victim of a long and enduring illness.John Bayville’s The Sea is a story that mirrors in some measure my own journey in grief. For Max Morden, the journey to his past was certainly more focused. Following his wife’s death after a long illness, he returned to the seaside town where his family had vacationed in his youth. And his reawakening memories swirled around a family, the Graces, he had met during a single summer when he was around 11 years old. For Max, mystery and tragedy were deeply embedded in his youthful past.