The Sea -- a novel of first love, marriage, loss and death

The Sea by John Banville
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Max Morden reflects on some of the turning points of his life after his wife dies and he tries to come to terms with widowerhood. He recalls first love, marriage, being a parent and experiencing the loss of people he has loved.

I looked at a few of the other reviews, and see that some complained that it had no plot, or that it was too slow-moving. Earlier today I read on social media about some children's programmes on TV that were said to be too fast, and recommended that parents should not allow their children to watch them, because studies had shown that they ruined children's attention span. They were fast, noisy, and no scene lasted longer than three seconds.

I found something different. The Sea was in a batch of books I had bought at a second-hand book shop a few days ago, and I looked at them all to see what I had got. And having picked this one up, I couldn't put it down. I put other books I had been reading aside, so I could finish this one. It was, as they say, a "pageturner". But why?

I think in part it was because of Banfield's detailed descriptions, both of settings and people. It made the people and places in the story seem more real, more three-dimensional. I cared what happened to them and their relationships, not only to the protagonist, but to each other. As Max Morden reflected on his experience of other people, so I reflected on mine. I appreciated the detail that came with the slow pace, which one would never see in a TV programme with scenes lasting 3 seconds or less.



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