The Sea (2005)
Who wrote it?
William John Banville (1945- ; Active 1970- ), born Wexford, Ireland. He was educated at a Christian Brothers school in Wexford, and did not attend university, to my knowledge one of very few Booker winners so far not to have done so. He worked initially as a clerk for Aer Lingus, which allowed him to travel, before focusing on journalism and writing.
He published his first collection of short stories, Long Lankin, in 1970. His first novel, Nightspawn, followed soon after. Among his many novels are several trilogies - the Revolutions Trilogy (1976-82), which focused on great scientists, and the Frames Trilogy (1989-95), the latter of which began with The Book of Evidence, which was nominated for the 1989 Booker, losing out to Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Since 2006 he has also written crime fiction under the name Benjamin Black.
Known as a great prose stylist, along with the Booker he has also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (in 1976) and the Franz Kafka Prize (2011), among others. In 2018 he was the victim of a hoax claiming he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but thusfar this one has in reality eluded him.
What's it about?
The Sea is narrated by Max Morden, a retired art historian reflecting on key moments of love and loss in his life. With little delineation, Max shifts his narration between three timeframes. The oldest covers a period in his childhood, during a summer holiday in a seaside town called Ballyless, where he becomes infatuated with a middle-class family, the Graces. His obsession focuses first on the mother, Connie, and then (in a different way) the daughter Chloe, who is also inextricably linked to her mute twin, Myles. We're also introduced to Carlos, the husband, and Rose, the twins' nursemaid. This part is in many ways the centrepiece and the events within it echo and reverberate across the other sections.
The second surrounds the death, much later, of his wife, Anna. This section centres largely on Max's feelings of uselessness as she succumbs to an inevitable death of cancer. The final thread is the "present day" section of the novel, in which Max has returned to the Grace's holiday home, the Cedars, ostensibly to recover from his wife's death and work on a book. In reality, he spends the time dwelling on past events, and making observations on the only other guest, a former army Colonel, and the property's host, Miss Vavasour.
What I liked
I loved the fact that this felt so out of step with the Booker winners of the time, which had tended (largely for the better) towards a relatively populist storytelling mode. This harks back to, and even improves on, the relatively pared-back understatement of some of the seventies Booker winners (Offshore, Holiday and the like.)
It manages something that, for me at least, is a relatively rare balancing act between compelling storytelling and poetic language-centricity. Banville has talked about wanting to create a style that sat somewhere between poetry and prose, and it’s in full evidence here. The language is rich, complex, and layered, but never (in my opinion) obfuscatory or impenetrable. It takes a little while to tune in to his style, but once you have, it’s hard to pull yourself away from it.
The central character of Max is certainly interesting, especially in his ways of reckoning with his past. There’s a sense that his visit to the Cedars should be about facing his issues head-on, but it becomes increasingly clear that he’s only passingly engaging with his issues, instead devoting a lot of time to observations of the Colonel and ultimately trying to drink himself into oblivion.
What I didn’t like
The language probably masks what is a pretty threadbare story otherwise. The motif of a withheld traumatic event that we get ever-closer to through the novel is pretty standard, and even with a sense that Banville is slightly parodying that mode of storytelling, it’s still perhaps not massively rewarding in pure story terms.
Beyond Max, the characters are fairly thinly drawn, probably there more as ciphers through which we can explore Max’s mindscape than interesting in and of themselves.
There’s a little bit of a “that was lovely, but so what?” vibe after reading. I don’t entirely know if that’s a bad thing, though.
Food & drink pairings
Picnics by the sea
A few too many double brandies, followed by a top up from the little Corporal
Fun facts
This is probably one of the more famous “surprise winners” in Booker history. Pre-contest discussion had focused variously on Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (most likely the favourite), Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (a fair chance after White Teeth was ignored), and perhaps Julian Barnes as an outsider (still yet to win the Prize at this point.) Banville, some 35 years into his career, was very much seen as the outsider.
Banville had a minor spat with chief Booker judge John Sutherland earlier in 2005 over the relative merits of Ian McEwan’s Saturday (Banville, unsurprisingly, was not a fan.) He assumed this would rule him out of Booker contention (a friend even encouraged him to place bets on each of his rivals.) As it turned out, the judges were split 50/50 between Banville and Ishiguro, with Sutherland sending the casting vote the way of The Sea.
While many authors cheered the relatively surprising win for Banville, others were less approving. Tibor Fischer commented that in The Sea "There's a lot of lovely language but not much novel" and called it a “nebulous, over-subtle choice.” Boyd Tonkin in the Independent called it “the wrong choice in a list of delights” and “nothing less than a disaster” for the Booker's reputation. Kazuo Ishiguro reached for a sporting analogy, saying “the goalkeeper jumped the wrong way.”
In his winner’s speech, Banville expressed pleasure at a “work of art” winning the award, which not un-shockingly led to accusations of arrogance. In reality, he was really aiming to articulate the ongoing debate between whether the Booker should reward artistic endeavor versus “populist” merits like entertainment, readability, etc. In his words:
“Whether The Sea is a successful work of art is not for me to say, but a work of art is what I set out to make. The kind of novels that I write very rarely win the Man Booker Prize, which in general promotes good, middlebrow fiction.”
A film version was released in 2013, directed by Stephen Brown and featuring Ciaran Hinds as Max and Charlotte Rampling as Miss Vavasour (among others.) Reviews seem fairly mixed. It doesn’t strike me as a novel that was begging to be filmed. Has anyone seen it?
Vanquished Foes
Julian Barnes (Arthur & George)
Sebastian Barry (A Long Long Way)
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
Ali Smith (The Accidental)
Zadie Smith (On Beauty)
See above for more on this! A heavyweight year though, for sure.
The 2005 Orange/Women's Prize was won by Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin. While there was no direct overlap with the Booker, both On Beauty and The Accidental appeared in the 2006 shortlist...
Context
In 2005:
7/7 Suicide Bombings on London's transport network
Hurricane Katrina devastates the US Gulf Coast
Stampede at the Al-Aaimmah bridge in Baghdad, Iraq, kills 953 Shia Muslim pilgrims
Kyoto Protocol comes into effect
North Korea announces that it possesses nuclear weapons
Provisional IRA orders end to campaign and disarmament
Angela Merkel takes office as first female Chancellor of Germany
Andrew Stimpson, a 25-year-old Scottish man, is reported as the first person proven to have been 'cured' of HIV
First human face transplant takes place in France
Death of Pope John Paul II; succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI
Marriage of Prince Charles & Camilla Parker Bowles
Live 8 concerts take place across the world, raising awareness of Make Poverty History campaign
Launch of YouTube
Microsoft's Xbox360 launched
First flight of the Airbus A380
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Stephanie Meyer, Twilight
Revival of BBC's Doctor Who
Brokeback Mountain
Batman Begins
Madagascar
LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
The National, Alligator
M.I.A., Arular
Life Lessons
The past is inescapable
But perhaps better to try…
Something profound about waves / water / grief / death…
Score
8
A beautiful read, and another one to really get lost in. A little too slight and self-absorbed to trouble the top of the rankings, but an interesting winner nonetheless.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) - 9
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2002) - 8.5
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Sea - John Banville (2005) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) - 7.5
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
Back to India in 2006 with Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.
