Pawsome Dogs 2024 Diary A5 Week To View Journal Appointment 2025 Wirebound Organiser Planner Ladies Work Office Stationery Notebook Honestly, I was amused to see how efforts were made to 'box' this novel into identity and gender politics by readers who were unable to identify it for what it really is: a confrontation of our destiny, our own fears of loneliness, and the old age looming in our future. Oh! And the words. I wanted to mention the words – some of them I had to jot down because I might need them some day: for a game (like when you have a whole slew of vowels – etiolate could be most helpful), or maybe just because certain words add clarity to what might be a more watery picture without them. This novel is a masterpiece of words used exactly as they should be precisely when they need to be. 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.

This memorable summer, painted with golden sun and inky shadow, creates the first plan of the novel. Just then Max had gained this sad knowledge that there is always a lover and a loved and which role he would be playing in that act. These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses, it is a sort of homeopathic cure… Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again… But no, that’s not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.”Murdoch’s novels always have at least one Svengali figure. Charles is the obvious candidate: his career is highly relevant, he controls the narrative we read, and towards the end, he says “ I was the dreamer, I the magician”. But there are several other contenders, and that was the most interesting puzzle for me: Rosina, James, even Titus or Hartley? An elderly grieving man, Max Morden, recalls his childhood memories, after the passing of his wife. He is lonely, depressed (considers an 'honorable suicide'), introspective, honest with himself, and has ample time to reflect on events that ultimately made him the man he was. But it was the events at their holiday bungalow one fateful year, that inspired him many years later to revisit the place where he was forced to become a man long before nature required him to be one. I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.” Balliteration: Banville, perhaps due to his over fondness for the first letter of his last name (as others have been shown to feel, in psychology studies), found it wise to buffet us with a bounty of bubbly, bouncy balloonish words beginning with "b" to give us a sense of what, I'm still not sure. 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.

Over the years, I've collected about 3 or 4 Banville books (just bought a slog more). The first was given to me by a girl I liked in HS, but never got around to reading it or dating her. I was finally inspired (or moved?) to read 'the Sea' (and a couple other Ireland-themed novels) because I was going to spend a week with the wife in Ireland and there is nothing better to read about on vacation than sex*, death, loss and sand. It was beautiful. It was poetry. It was nearly perfect. But smell and taste? Much harder. Think of a favourite food ( siu mai). You can see it, you can feel its texture, and hear the sound as you bite into it. But can you describe, let alone experience its taste and smell? You are not even allowed to hate me a little, any more, like you used to” says Anna to Max with a sad, knowing smile. Isn't it true that we can’t help hating the ones we love the most? We are human beings after all. And the guilt and the anger and the violence which come after our beloved have been irrevocably usurped from us, leaving us alone with all that self-disgust, with no one to save us from ourselves, hating them, the gone, even more. It would suit all ages... a great amount of information that my daughter and I enjoyed reading together. A must for any children with an interest in the sea" Toppsta

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But Avril, now. Who in these parts would have conferred on their child a name so delicately vernal? Among meditations on losses and presages of death, we encounter once in a while a specter of happiness, might we dream of hope? Possibly this is too far to imagine, but even Banville protagonist’s wanderings remember to point to the existence of peace if not happiness. Like the sun that steals a chance to come through on an overcast and dark sky, with its rays reflecting alluringly in the tumultuous sea. How does Banville present us with a scene not so wistful, how can he, amidst so such melancholy, bring up moments of joy? His only escape is through remembrances of a long gone past: a past of friendship, a past with wisps of seduction, forgetting the losses that followed for mere moments. Those moments invariably invoke the sea with its vastness and its depths, along with its mysterious personal allure. This is not a long book, although it definitely is not one to attempt to rush through. The author sets the pace, takes control of this story, and doesn’t let it go for a moment. I was a very willing passenger on this journey with Max and there were times that something he said startled my own past memories into my reading experience. Countless times I had to set the book down and indulge in my own personal reveries. In most respects they weren’t connected to the story except by a small filament of invisible thread, yet once the thread was pulled into my sight, I had no choice but to follow it. Max Morden had met once gods. They came in the guise of Grace family. Father, noisy lecherous satyr. Mother, oozing sensuality indolent goddess, will become his first erotic fascination. And twins. Chloe, very mature for her age, feisty girl with rather strong personality and Myles, shy and impish boy. There was Rose yet, nanny or governess, a sad nymph holding a secret in her heart. They rented at the seaside a summer house, called The Cedars. I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.