The Sea (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of The Sea 11 days ago.

• In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel — among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Pequeño saltamontes edited the awards of The Sea 3 weeks ago.

• Added an award: Man Booker Prize
• Added category of an award: Man Booker Prize Best novel written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe
• Added year of an award: Man Booker Prize 2005

Timothy Gray approved Timothy Gray’s request to change the title of The Sea Sunday, November 1 2009.

Timothy Gray approved Timothy Gray’s request to combine 3 books, including The Sea, Saturday, October 31 2009.

Timothy Gray edited the awards of The Sea Friday, October 23 2009.

• Added an award: Pulitzer Prize
• Added year of an award: Pulitzer Prize 2005
• Added ranking of an award: Pulitzer Prize Winner

Timothy Gray changed the title of The Sea Friday, October 23 2009.

Timothy Gray submitted a request to combine 3 books, including The Sea, Friday, October 23 2009.

Shelfari edited the description of The Sea Saturday, August 1 2009.

• 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.

Shelfari edited the contributors of The Sea Tuesday, July 21 2009.

• reordered the contributors.
• 1 : John Banville:

Shelfari edited the contributors of The Sea Sunday, July 19 2009.

• Added a contributor: John Banville: (Primary Author)