John Banville's 'The Sea'

Afterthoughts

Max puts everything into historical present - his present life lives on the memories of his childhood. His childhood love, fantasies, knowledge, trauma moulded his life after - his adulthood, and way past that. I perserved right to the end to savour the sweetness of the book. The question is - do we try to relive our unfulfilled past in our present, only to realise that we can never find our loss nor the answers we need?

Banville's an excellent stylist who fits together with elegance the jigsaw pieces of life to complete the whole picture of it at the end.

My rating: ***1/2 (**** for the ending)
Award: The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2005

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Fav quotes
John Banville, The Sea, Picador, London, 2005.

'Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another?' p.215

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Resources

www.themanbookerprize.com/

Available in major bookstores, NLB libraries, and SP library.