Book Review: The Sea by John Banville

After the death of his wife, Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he spent a transformative summer as a young man. It was here he met The Graces, a wealthy family that he became quickly entwined with.

The Sea moves between the present timeline where Morden is a boarder in a house in this village, reminiscing about his wife’s death and his summer with the Grace family. He takes us back to that summer, looking at it once more with his adult memories and larger understanding of what took place that summer. Plot is a little thin as there isn’t much tension in the present time. Morden’s presence in the village is a little strange, particularly to his daughter, but he is given a fair amount of slack as someone grieving the loss of his wife. In the past timeline, we have the sense that the summer is going to end in drama, maybe tragedy. There is a building tension amongst the Grace family and in Morden’s place within it. He’s an outsider, a poorer child, who has wormed his way in amongst them in a confusing and sometimes disconcerting manner.

We see the Graces only from Morden’s perspective and so we see them as a strange family. Mr and Mrs Grace, who are not like the other adults around. Rose who is some sort of employee of the family but seems on the fringes of everything. And Chloe and Myles, the twin children. Myles is mute and Chloe is a mystery. They are strangely entwined in the way that twins always seem to be in books. Neither Chloe nor Myles seem like children who could exist in the real world. Morden is drawn to the whole family, though it is initially Mrs. Grace who pulls him in.

In fact, none of the other characters seem like they could exist outside of Morden’s mind. I don’t mean that they are figments of his imagination but that he never describes them as fully formed people. Most likely, it seems that he cannot see anybody outside of himself as a fully formed person. This feels particularly noticeable when it comes to the female characters. Morden is obsessed with Mrs Grace and then Chloe but we know almost nothing about them as individuals. We get a lot of physical description but despite spending most of the summer with Chloe, he seems to know nothing about who she is. She is this sort of ethereal, caricature of a quirky young girl who does things that Morden doesn’t understand. I found myself more and more wondering, what would this story be from Chloe’s perspective?

The writing itself is beautiful. The descriptions of place are evocative and interesting and the prose is creative and memorable. But while I could have overlooked the very light plot, I just couldn’t enjoy this book. I haven’t read Banville before so I don’t know if this is what his writing is like or just this book, but it felt like either Banville or Morden had never spent serious time getting to know a woman.