Just now I’m reading The Sea by John Banville. It won the Man Booker prize in 2005. Martin Amis calls Banville ‘a master’ whose ‘prose gives continuous sensual delight.’
As I read (I’m about half the way through) I find I’m not overly sympathetic with the protagonist Max, I find him cold and distant, but he is a man in grief and I know there is a mystery from the past yet to be revealed – so this may change how I feel. I also find that for me as reader there is a lack of novel – I suppose by this I mean character, plot etc – as opposed to an abundance of prose. I suspect that I will remember the book as much for its language as for its people and their story
The Sea is a novel which explores remembrance and loss – elegiac, atmospheric and erotic, all ingredients that I love and the language is luscious, evocative, at times deceptively simple and always surprising – here is Max’s first glimpse of the Grace family – his meeting with them one summer when he is a boy will come to haunt him –
They were gone in a moment, the car’s sashaying back-end scooting around a bend in the road with a spurt of exhaust smoke. Tall grasses in the ditch, blond like the woman’s hair, shivered briefly and returned to their former dreaming stillness.
The beach –
A steep-slanted flash of sunlight fell along the beach, turning the sand above the waterline bone-white, and a white seabird dazzling against the wall of cloud, flew up on sickle wings and turned with a soundless snap and plunged itself, a shutting chevron into the sea’s unruly back.
There are jewels like these to savour on every page , so that you just want to get your notebook out and write them down.
I find reading a novel like The Sea, despite my misgivings, really inspires me to want to get started on something NEW…SOON!
RoomtoWrite’s March one day conference will offer a Masterclass in Reading For Writers – how to learn from and be inspired by great writers – those signing up will be informed of the texts to be discussed.
What a lovely post. There is no doubt we can learn so much from reading great writers and poets. John Banfield offers us both aspects, The language you quote is beautiful. And I like the way you hint at the need for balance between such charging literary creativity and the way a narrative works. But there is room for every kind of variation in literature and we can learn so many different things from so many writers, And then write as ourselves.
Looking forward to the Master Class.
wx
This is one of my favourite books – but like you, I read it for the prose not the plot. It is utterly beautiful and the plot comes together at the end.
KJX
Dear Kathleen and Wendy – I agree the plot comes together at the end! And there is room for every kind of varaition in literature — that’s what makes it so rich and exciting
A x