The Sea in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Jul 19, 2018 Jessica Haider rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, fiction, booker-prize-winner, irish

3.5 out of 5 stars. I may bump this up as I think some more about the book. It was beautifully written.

Follows a middle-aged Irishman as he visits the seaside town where he spent summer vacations as a child. His visit dredges up old memories from his childhood and the summer days he spent with a brother and sister from a more well-to-do family.

This novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. I've read many Booker prize winners/nominees and this definitely has the same feel as those. ...more

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Oct 25, 2007 Kate rated it really liked it

First reaction: Beautiful writing. I may actually finish this one.

Half-way point reaction: This book is hella depressing me. Banville is SO astute, so accurate in describing feelings that I not only recall pain I've experienced but am starting to project onto myself the fears and feelings of having a partner who is dying. Hopefully this is just PMS. It's a hard book to read on several levels.

Finished: Wow. The second half is much easier to follow, for some reason. Like Stegner, Banville's greate ...more

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Dec 22, 2008 neil rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Unfamiliar words that I encountered while reading The Sea in 2021 and couldn't easily define: plimsoll; gorse bushes; apotropaic; medial; leporine; losel; strangury; moue; plosh; crimplene; costiveness; cackhanded; anthropic; finical; eructations; gleet; scurf; chatelaine; crombie; bosky; relutinous; djellabas; civet; deckle; maja; Aurilaceous; rubescent; craquelured; groynes; cinereal; coevals; horrent; cretonne; costive; catafalque; crepitant; ingle; refection; stodge; wattles; joggling; bomba ...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Kecia rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, booker-prize, ireland

Every once in a while I come across a book so beautifully written that I get lost in the poetry of the prose and I don't give a fig about the plot. The Sea is such a book. The plot is a rambling tale. It's like having a conversation with a grieved friend who tells you his story over coffee and jumps around in time to do so. Sometimes you have stop him and go back in order to keep track of his story, but you don't care because his story telling weaves a beautiful web.

As soon as I finished it I wa ...more

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Dec 18, 2019 Mary rated it really liked it

This book suited my current melancholic outlook. After losing his wife a man goes for solace to the seaside where he came of age and witnessed a tragic event. As a boy he aspired to rise above his station in life and was allowed to integrate with a wildly different holiday family. He comes of age. In flashbacks we get a sense of both his boyhood and his marriage.

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Oct 18, 2007 Sarah rated it did not like it

Shelves: fiction

Depressing. Irish. Worth a read if you don't think it will make you kill yourself. Banville is really good at description, and his main character is perfectly-flawed. ...more

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