Customer Reviews

The Marriage of the Sea: A Novel

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Jane Alison is excellent in her sophomore novel "Marriage of the Sea," a plotlessly beautiful tale of several people with lives that loosely intersect, based on love and longing. It's a beautiful, engrossing book with plenty of interesting characters and a lush prose style that is unforgettable.

Old, wealthy Oswaldo lives in a decayed house, reflecting on his aged body and lonely life, until he decides to create a "water villa" like nothing anyone has ever seen. Max travels from London to New Orleans to woo a beautiful woman he has fallen in love with, gets an American makeover, and puts on a spectacular Futurist banquet -- all to get her attention.

Sensitive artist Anton and his depressed wife Josephine struggle to have a child, even as Anton goes to Venice to work for Oswaldo on his "water villa." And Lach leaves his girlfriend Vera for the beautiful Italian Francesca, only to learn that Vera is also in Italy -- working on a portrait for Oswaldo. As the story unfolds, the lives of these friends, lovers and acquaintences mingle together.

Water is the center of this novel -- a sea-themed banquet, a water villa, mentions of levees and the Sargasso Sea. And "Marriage of the Sea" itself is like water -- going quickly from one story to another, mingling all of them together into one fluid mass that is always shifting around. There isn't much of a plot, nor much in the way of humor (except Max's pitiful efforts to impress Lucinde), but the half-dozen subplots serve to keep it afloat.

At first glance, Alison's view of New Orleans and Venice don't have much in common besides water. But as "Marriage" progresses we see that they share a sense of genteel decay, with the boarded-up ballrooms and decrepit villas sinking into the sea. Her sense of atmosphere is outstanding, recalling A.S. Byatt at her best; the entire book has a sort of liquid, murky feel.

And the characters are, if not well-rounded, then engagingly realistic -- the confused, artistic Anton, the depressed Josephine, the puppy-like Max, and the creepy Lach. Each one is searching for something -- a lover, a home, a baby -- and Alison draws us into their respective quests without making them pathetic.

Jane Alison's "Marriage of the Sea" is a liquid, languid journey to New Orleans and Venice, with a dash of dark humor and some mild tragedy. A beautifully-written second novel.

Powerful and lyrical tale told with admirable restraint and understatement. Hints and innuendo propel the six characters of The Marriage of the Sea between the two irresistibly romantic settings of Venice and New Orleans as fluidly as a sleek sailboat upon the waves. This ornate and complex novel explores aging and decay (physical, spiritual, and architectural), marriage, barrenness in its many manifestations, lonliness, and the complex nature of relationships.
A piece of writing as finely drawn as the lines of Venitian canals and as richly layered as the levels of New Orleans society.
A winner. May Jane Alison write many more this good.

The Marriage of the Sea is a very well written novel about love and coincidence in contemporary Venice and New Orleans. The novel has a wonderful flow, and moves back and forth among a number of characters all in search of some relationship-related satisfaction while all chasing satisfaction with careers. This is a quick, compelling read without much of a plot. The beauty of the novel lies rather in the crisp, fresh writing. This evocative novel has a certain timelessness to it that makes it a wonderful read. Enjoy.

Once again, Jane Alison's poetic, nuanced prose enchants the reader in this, her second novel. As in The Love-Artist, her themes include the meaning of creation, the quest for immortality, the nature of art, the power of the bonds between lovers. Here, however, she sets her tales in several waterfront cities, primarily Venice and New Orleans, and handles those themes and others in a modern context. One character, boating across the lagoon of Venice, "thought about all that had once sailed here from over the waters: vermilion, serpentine, lapis lazuli, and silk that would sometimes be so subtly woven as to have the look of the sea, moire, or to sparkle like the paths of fireflies."
The novel works almost like a minuet, with the stories of several characters who exchange partners with each other, seizing or relinquishing creative and emotional ties as the tide seizes and relinquishes treasures or trash from the sea. Alison's exploration of creative effort and agony is complex and moving. This book was highly praised in the New York Times Book Review and was listed in that publication's And Bear In Mind column (editors' choices of recent books of particular interest). I highly recommend it!

Brilliantly placing her story in New Orleans and Venice, I disagree with the reviewer who could see no relationship between these two cities. Both are magical and mysterious cities that exist as much in one's imagination as in reality, and this is what Alison captures so well. The story of seven characters are vaguely linked in this story - two married couples, whose marriages are disintegrating like the two cities in which they are set, as well as two single people engaged in a subtle dance of courtship and desire. Finally there is an elderly, patrician Venetian facing his physical disintegration, as he longs to preserve the beauty of Venice in the construction of a 'water' villa floating on the surface of the lagoon.

Several reviewers criticized the lack of character development in this novel. I believe the author chose to do this purposely. Her characters advance and retreat like the tides themselves, while the author captures their vague and ephemeral natures, characteristics which they share with the cities in which the novel is set. This is a beautifully lyrical novel in which the unknowability of the human heart is explored.

This novel, the author's second, scores because it is intelligent, fresh in its characters and settings, broad and deep in the themes it explores, and tantalizingly under-written. So much is left unsaid, because the reader already knows--from the questions the characters ask themselves, to their gestures, to the way one would feel in the same place. There are Lachlan and Vera, artists drawn to Venice, and a couple until Lach experiments with Francesca, only to discover her flaws later; Anton and Josephine, who met by accident, but have little holding them together; Max, who is desperate to love, and Lucinde, incapable of love. And the incomparable Oswaldo, the patron, whose fancies power so much of the others' frustrations.

This is a wonderful novel. The pairing of New Orleans and Venice is brilliant, as is the use of the sea throughout, encroaching on everything, stranding us occasionally, always returning.

Nothing ever really seemed to happen. The chapters are very short, snippets of info about the characters, each with their own problems and hang ups. I was halfway through the book and still wondering if something was going to happen. It never really seemed to, until, perhaps the last 20 pages, and even then it was anticlimactic.

I continued to read it out of curiousity I suppose, and because it was an easy, quick read. I can certainly see why some might love this book. It's got a mystical sort of cryptic flow to it, and the intertwined lives of the characters some might find intricate and compelling. But I didn't. Not really.

Although it's artfully conceived, The Marriage of the Sea suffers from jump-cutting between its characters, none of whom breathe and come to life. The most convincing players are the two cities in which the action takes place, Venice and New Orleans. And while setting and the author's clever asides on the arts and in-vitro fertilization might be enough to carry a short story, this tale is too meagre for a book-length format.

If you've ever been to Venice and New Orleans, you'll love this book - not to say that it isn't lovely otherwise, but I found it marvelously evocative of place.