The Sea by John Banville

"There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences." – Jane Austen “Mansfield Park”

In John Banville’s Man Booker Prize winning novel “The Sea,” we meet Max Morden, an art historian in his sixties who is, through no fault of his own, inextricably tied up with both the idea and the reality of death. Shortly after his wife Anna’s lost battle with cancer, Morden retreats to the seaside village where he had spent many a childhood summer. It is here that we meet the few people in his life, both past and present. His rented room is part of the summer house that was always commissioned to the Graces, the family he marks his childhood by. It is with them that he feels his first yearnings. He struggles with his frustrations at being on the bottom rung of the social hierarchy, just because they rented chalets instead of real houses for the holidays. He is envious of the easy life, the stability that the Graces exude and represent for him, what with the powerful twin relationship between Chloe and Myles from which, try as he might, he would always be excluded. He also discovers the beauty of self-possessed women in the Graces, a far cry from his repressed and socially inept mother.

“Had it been in my power I would have cancelled my shaming parents on the spot, would have popped them like bubbles of sea spray, my fat little bare-faced mother and my fathe whose body might have been made of lard.”

Interspersed with memories of his childhood are those of Anna and their daughter Claire. We see the physical and emotional process of the disease taking hold of them both individually and as a family. In addition, Morden’s already strained relations with Claire was further tested upon Anna’s death, being that she was not in favor of her father’s move to the seaside village where he would be disconnected from “reality,” as she saw it. We see, however, that his life away from the territory where the memories of his wife covered him like a shroud, brought him even closer to understanding their connection, her death and, eventually, his own.

“Has this not always been my aim, is this not, indeed, the secret aim of all of us, to be no longer flesh but transformed utterly into the gossamer of unsuffering spirit?”

Although the novel is largely about death, what really grips the reader is its surrender to memory as the main device in telling the story. Every page is a wonderful articulation of just how powerful it is, though not entirely trustworthy. Morden, in not a few pages, is seen to tussle with his loose rein over “Madam Memory,” as he calls it. It is important to note, at this point, that Max Morden’s traits as a narrator are familiar to Banville fans. In fact, according to this article, his narrators are usually said to be “articulate males who, for one reason or another, conscious or no, hesitate and prevaricate.”

Be that as it may, “The Sea” offers the reader more than just a story told by a fumbling, aged widower. It is a charming account of friendships, first love, and a graceful coming to terms with mortality. Indeed, Morden shares in spurts of words and emotion, his outbursts not always linear. But it is always fluid, always natural. For the truth is, memories either sidle up to us or catch us unaware, but always in waves.