This summer we will be reading Banville's The Sea.
Please join us and share your thoughts in this thread.
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This summer we will be reading Banville's The Sea.
Please join us and share your thoughts in this thread.
I probably will start this around mid July. I will be reading McCarthy's The Road first.
Started reading it: Finding the initial flashbacks a little confusing as it seems like the story keeps going back and forth between 3 different time periods... but story is intriguing.
And I see that the poll is divided between "Waste of time" and "Good book."... Interesting! :)
Didn't know it was a Man Booker Prize Winner...
Hmm, I see Babara didn't like it. I hope she'll tell us why.
Why are we calling it a challenge ? should I be worried?
:confused:
Yes, be worried, Night, be very, very, veeeerrryyy worried! http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/sm...ons_scared.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
Do you think the family surname "Grace" has a significance? The way it has been repeated, "the Graces", makes me wonder... Maybe it might be clearer as the story progresses; I have only read 1/4 of the book yet.
Rats! ahh well at least I got a new smilie source out of the deal ( nice smilie btw scher).Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I am intrigued by the selection. Is there a schedule for chapters or spoiler rules?
Thanks
Oh, I did not think you were literally posing a question for us to answer; thought it was more of a rhetorical question as I am sure most of us here are familiar with the Graces (otherwise, I would have put my hand up and shouted "Me, me, me, M'am!! :p)
I have read only 1/4 of the book... So do not feel ready for an in-depth analysis/discussion yet.
What's more I almost never read the study guides when I am pleasure-reading.
I'm going to be gone, but I guess I'll try and jump into the conversation when I get back in early August. Perhaps if it is a good book, the conversation will last that long.
This is a summer reading so I am sure there wil be others who read the book later in the summer (I have to return mine to the library as soon as possible, which is why started so early to read).Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Hope you have a great time wherever you are going, JBI! :)
I read the book last summer, and I thought it was one of the most boring novels I ever read. There were just very few passages that appealed to me, otherwise Banville wasn't able to get me interested in his characters. But I will follow this thread closely, maybe there was something I missed. Many posters seem to be fascinated by the book, and I'm eager to know why.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I read The Sea a little while back and had only a medium reaction to it. I felt I must be missing something, especially now in retrospect, since I have really taken such a liking to many other of Banville's works. Since I have also already read The Road for the other discussion, and don't have to read it again so urgently, it sounds like I'll pull The Sea back off the shelf and reread it to join this discussion in a little while. I'm sure I'll get more out of the reread and also the discussion, so I'm looking forward to it.
See you soon. :)
I read The Sea 6 months ago. I found Banville's prose rather elegant but somehow the story in itself still came out dull and tedious, just a profusion of ramblings.
______________________________
I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful.
In every one of these no man is free,
... These, my lord,
Are such allowed infirmities that honesty
Is never free of.
-- The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Now, I've been lost in the story
I am currently reading it at the moment. bout 1/4 the way.
Nightie i'll send you your copy this weekend.
Yes, Antiquarian, I've read those also, plus The Untouchable, all in one very happy binge. And maybe they are all different from The Sea in each having more of a story, or more action, or more dramatic conflict, or even just more characters -- all of the things that we usually see and expect in a novel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Antiquarian
I've now finished my reread (second read) and have learned much more about the literary structure of the novel and have properly placed many more details of the story. But still I feel that it will take once more through it -- quickly, now that I have it all marked up -- to get it all properly sorted out into a linear narrative.
So, it is definitely different, and on this third go-through I'll be looking -- I might say desperately looking -- for a theme or point to the whole story or to Morden's whole rumination. But, overall, it has been a fascinating book to read slowly and to absorb. Reading fast, I suspect one might miss all the turns in a very winding road.
Some puzzles I just won't allow to defeat me. :)
I read The Sea about a year and a half ago, it was the first Banville and the real reason I picked it up was a blurb on the cover...
Well, who could pass that up! :DQuote:
"John Banville is the heir to Nabokov' - The Sunday Telegraph".
Have to reread as I can't remember details only the outline.
Back later.
Finished reading and I cannot say I liked it much.
Banville's writing is beautiful at times but mostly I thought it was laborious and somewhat distracting due to his tendency for long and complicated sentences.
At the moment, I don't want to go into details not to spoil for others but the ending was disappointing for me as well.
I'm practically finished, I am loving it more the second time around, and wonder if the second reading is really the charm. I did enjoy it the first time around, but this time around it is more revelatory.
The way Banville slips back and forth between the four time frames is easy and seamless.
Scheherazade,
I didn't find it laborious a bit, the detail was necessary for me to understand "Max" and his motivations. I don't want to post anything that will spoil it for those not yet finished, but I thought every detail was necessary.
Now when for the first time reading The Untouchable I was stymied by the 5 different names everyone seemed to have, but picked it up about a year later and could not put it down.
I've read, um....the trilogy, Shroud, The Untouchable and the Benjamin Black enteries, at least the Quirks. All vintage Banville.
Sounds like the makings for a good discussion shaping up! :)
Argh! Have to get replacement copies! pages started going out of sequance and doubling up when i got to 85.
Soz Nightie! looks like you copy is too. good thing i hadnt posted it!
Okay so i've finished the book. it was a fairly good book. wouldnt say absolutely wonderful.
Started it today on the way to work, or did I start t yetsrday ? :confused: ahh well anyway THANKS NIAMH! ...I am finding it rather hard going actually and confusing, but thats good in a way for me becuase usually Id just inhale a book, and Im short on books supply anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
There was something thatdid make me raise an eyebrow or 2 , he says that on theday he met Chole grace he was 10 or 11, and yet he was hoping that rose would loose her towel, and has 'humid dreams' about Mrs Grace.
I just thought it was a bit weird is all- or have I got the age wrong?
:confused:
I will be starting this novel by the weekend. I hope there are still people up for a good discussion.
I started. Read about fifteen pages and then realized nothing registered. :lol: I'll have to start again. The language doesn't seem hard or anything like that, but for some reason it's not sinking in.
oh dear! Poor Virgil! :p
yeah it would be good to get this discussion on the go. :nod:
I'm sorry that I missed this one. I read it for a class about a year ago and it was beautiful - as Banville usually is. Has anyone tried any of his Benjamin Black novels? I just wrote a conference paper on his switch to crime fiction and I was wondering what others were thinking.
Victoria, you haven't missed it at all. :)
This a marvelous book although now I may have to re-re-read....;)
And yes I have read his Benjamin Black outings. I loved them, although the second one The Silver Swan was not as satisfying. I put that down to building for the future additions to the series.
I also read The Lemur and have to admit to being disappointed, when I first read it I was not aware it had been a serialization in the NYT. Something seemed missing to me.
I haven't read The Lemur, but I do agree with you when you say that The Silver Swan wasn't as compelling as Christine Falls. Also, considering what Banville has written in the past, Christine Falls wasn't as shocking as I expected it to be.
It finally began to click, and and does seem wonderfully written. I am having a hard time keeping the time straight. Hopefully it become clear shortly. I'm enjoying it now. :) Here check this sentence out:
Quote:
Immediately then, and for the first time in I do not know how long, I thought of Ballyless and the house there on Station Road, and the Graces, and Chloe Grace, I cannot think why, and it was as if I had stepped suddenly out of the dark into a splash of pale, salt-washed sunlight.
I've now read 50 pages which is about a quarter of the book. Antiquarian was right, the prose is marvelous. I love the writing. I love the way Banville is flipping from the past and present, and the relationship between the narrator and his daughter is marvelous. The problem I'm having is that here I am a quarter of the way through and there is no inkling as to what the story is. There is the narrator's experience as a boy that keeps coming up and there is the death of his wife, but what's the story? The author is just waiting too long to get to the crux.
For those that have read this, there is no need to respond. The story line will become apparent shortly. At least I hope. :)
Here's a little passage that shows the past and present and its significance, and his marvelous prose:
(p34-35)Quote:
When we arrived I marvelled to see how much of the village as I remembered it was still here, if only for eyes that knew where to look, mine, that is. It was like encountering an old flame behind whose features thickened by age the slender lineaments that a former self so loved can still be clearly discerned. We passed the deserted railway station and came bowling over the little bridge--still intact, still in place!--my stomach at the crest doing that remembered sudden upward float and fall, and there it was before me, the hill road, and the beach at the bottom, and the sea. I did not stop at the house but only slowed as we went by. There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it.
August is almost upon us so it sounds like time for me to go once through the book one more time to examine the notes I laboriously made to sort out the time frames and flashbacks, and then perhaps formulate the linear story behind the involuted narrative. Though I have been mostly quiet, I have to say I am making progress and getting toward sorting it out. The elusive part to me still is understanding what he learned from his rumination over all the past events described in the book. But if it is there, one should be able to find it.
I think the nickel has finally dropped for me in understanding Max Morden so, with about a hundred slips of paper sticking out of every part of the book, I think I'm ready for discussion when it arises. Tracing threads through the story has made for a fascinating puzzle that underlies what seems to be nominally a memoir.
I'm approaching half way through Walter. I'll definitely be there for the discussion. Feel free to bring up a topic, preferably one toward the beginning of the book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter
Virgil,
I think I'll prefer to wait because it is so hard to find the beginning of the book. I say that in jest, but only partly, because the allusions in that first paragraph stretch so deeply into the book, more than 3/4ths of the way, for their eventual resolution. And the next paragraph is fifty years later, although that is not so obvious either.
I think Banville has written an amazing tour de force of stream-of-consciousness narrative to tell a story that weaves back and forth through about five different periods of Max Morden's life in about four different venues, and which very nearly needs a score card to keep track of. I finally did have to resort to numerous bookmarks and extensive marginal notations to sort things out, but for me that is part of the total pleasure of reading a book of this complexity. I hope you are sailing along quite well and having an easier time of it.
No hurry. :D