• Title: The Sea
• Author: John Banville
• Genre/Subject: Booker Prize Winner fiction
• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication Date: 2005
• Start date: 4/15/24
• Finish date: 4/17/24

Review:

This book, perhaps of all the (eight so far) Booker Prize winners I have read is the One True Winner. An outstanding piece of modern literature and a joy to read.

So what is it about? In this case, I’m at a loss, it’s sort of about life, and dealing with illness, and grieving, and the simple joys of seaside life, and yet. And yet, this was so much more but you have to read the whole 195 (that’s it) pages to understand it.

Trying to pinpoint what makes a book go from good to great is like trying to describe why a muscle car engine sounds cool. And what appeals to me does not mean that everyone will get the same experience from reading it. In the case of the Booker Prize though, it takes a lot of very smart people to come to the consensus that this is truly great.

As this was written by an Irish author and set in Ireland I was a bit apprehensive about beginning it. Not because I don’t like Irish authors or Ireland, but because I often find the Irish idiom difficult to understand. Often there’s a lot of “if you’re from Ireland you’ll get this” material and that’s the literary equivalent of dropping inside jokes in a wedding speech. Sure Barry and Jen get it and smile knowingly but the rest of us are eyeing up the closed bar.

This is a novel that stays with you. Or in my case I’m still sorting it out in my head, processing the feelings and emotions that it inspired. I read a lot, and this is unusual for a book to have this much of an effect on me. But there it is.