Customer Reviews

The Sea, the Sea

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Sea, The Sea has become one of my top five favorite books and Iris Murdoch one of my favorite authors.

In The Sea, The Sea, we meet arrogant, snobbish Charles Arrowby, a retired London theatre director. Charles has recently bought a house by the sea where he hopes to finish his pretentious autobiography. Many things happen, however, to disrupt this enterprise.

First, Charles discovers that one of the small town's inhabitants is his very first love, a love who disappeared from his life in his teens. Believing her to symbolize his lost youth and innocence, Charles becomes obsessed with her almost to the point of madness.

Iris Murdoch's books are all excellent studies of relationships and The Sea, The Sea is certainly one of her best. In it, the character of Charles lies at the center of a vast network of complex relationships and interpersonal interactions. Much of the novel is an exploration of how we, ourselves, influence what others eventually come to see about people and how they relate to them.

Although relationships take center stage in this novel, there is much symbolism and even a little of the supernatural. The sea is so ever-present in this book that it almost seems to be a character in and of itself. Charles reacts to the sea in many ways, some benign, some not so benign. The sea, itself, is portrayed as something that is untimately not able to be understood or controlled, much as is life.

Although this book is passionately moral, it is definitely not a treatise on how to behave in a moral fashion. In fact, many of Murdoch's characters could be said to be anything but "moral." The values and consequences portrayed in this book are done with such a skillful hand, that The Sea, The Sea sits head and shoulders above Murdoch's other books, good as they are.

Just like the theatrical world it explores, The Sea, The Sea, is a showy, dramatic and powerfully effective book. It is Iris Murdoch's masterpiece and a huge reward for any reader.

Having recently seen the film Iris, and being disappointed inasmuch as it focused mostly on her personal life as a young woman and on her Alzheimer's as an older woman without featuring information about her many novels, I decided that I'd been remiss in never having read her works. I then proceeded to read The Sea, The Sea. This book is deep as the sea, inasmuch as it is about the mental processes of a not-so-good playwright who manages to become famous. The novel turns out to be quite interesting; in fact, fascinating; though at one point, somewhere around page 100, I felt that I didn't give a whit about it all. That was temporary. I returned to the book, read the remaining 4/5ths, and found it rewarding. It starts out on an intimate basis, as if you are reading a letter from a friend, and I utterly loved that ploy. Then, it changes; suddenly, all kinds of twists and turns occur, and though the reader has at first seen Charles, the protagonist, as a humorous man who withdraws from society to a home by the sea (I chuckle, for this house on a cliff in rugged terrain is definitely not the haven which a home should be), circumstances plunge him into temporary madness. The word "sea" conjures so many images of all that the sea can be: wild, calm, loving, cruel. Charles gets to see every aspect of the sea's personality, and we get to see every aspect of his. At one point in the book, Charles' madness is hard to take, as we are drawn in to experience it. In other words, since Charles has chosen a craggy environment in his quest for peace, peace is hard to come by. Charles undergoes an epiphany -- in fact, more than one. He turns out to be a lucky man, inasmuch as he is given the unique opportunity of learning that he was wrong in many ways, and in many of the impressions which he formed, thoughout his earlier years, and thus he is able to look at life in a new light. Murdoch adds charm to the sometimes grim account in the way she brings in ordinary details of day-to-day life. This serves to bring in an element of humor which sometimes caused me to laugh out loud. The character of James, Charles' cousin with whom he had a kind of sibling rivalry all his life, is the soul of the book. We laugh at Charles' description of James early on, but we are quite sober at the picture of the true James at the end. Symbolism abounds in this book. Though one doesn't have to know the myth on which it is based in order to appreciate it, it doesn't hurt to have as much knowledge as possible to heighten one's understanding. I found myself wondering if this book was autobiographical, because I saw some similarities between the Iris of the film and the Charles of the book. Though the protagonist in The Sea, The Sea is a male, we know from the film, Iris, that Iris was bisexual. I also wondered if there was any reason why several of the women in Charles' life had male names, if there was any meaning behind those names. Why Charles' voice sounded more feminine, at times, than masculine. But that is secondary to the more important issues of this book, and the fact that this is a novel very much worth reading, certainly raising many more issues than I have summed up briefly in this review.

The first section of this novel, "Prehistory," seems interminable at times. The British director Charles Arrowby has retired to a drafty old house by the sea to write his memoirs. He begins in diary form, relating his daily regime, detailing his fastidiously prepared meals, recalling with fondness (and condescension) people in his life, dismissing others who have crossed him, and reminiscing about the one "true love" of his life, who inexplicably left him when he was a youth. With the exception of one or two mysterious incidents (at one point, he thinks he sees a dragon in the sea), so little happens in the first 87 pages that anyone will wonder, why am I reading this?

It's a set-up. After this lengthy prologue, people from Arrowby's past begin arriving at his doorstep or in the nearby village, shattering the tranquil atmosphere of his retirement and belying the gist of his memories. As the one character who Arrowby had earlier described as "very attached to me" says in anger: "You're an exploded myth.... You never did anything for mankind, you never did a damn thing for anybody but yourself." The reader quickly realizes that Arrowby is an egotistical boor who, under the guise of "love," wielded power and fear over the people in his life. Then, as the horde of Londoners from his past continue to invade his new home and complicate his life, he unexpectedly runs into his adolescent flame--and he convinces himself that, trapped in a marriage he regards as repulsive, she still has feelings for him.

What follows is both hilarious and heart-rending--and often excruciating to read. Charles Arrowby is not a likeable character; he is, in fact, detestable. And the life he remembers is not how his "friends" recall it. As his cousin asks him, "What is the truth anyway...? As we know ourselves we are fake objects, fakes, bundles of illusions." In the scene previous to this conversation, Arrowby is in a museum, examining Titian's "Perseus and Andromeda," which depicts Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a dragon. Murdoch's novel asks (and here I oversimplify): who's really the monster? who's the rescuer? who indeed needs to be rescued? and at what expense?

Be warned: For this Penguin edition Mary Kinzie has provided one of those annoying introductions that would make an excellent afterword. Much of her essay is incomprehensible unless you've read the novel, and it gives away many important plot elements, including the pivotal climax. Happy is the reader who waits until finishing the novel to read this incisive summary.

First of all, I'm not 3, I'm 31, but the "how old are you?" seems to stop at 12.

This really is one of those books that just swallows you up. The sheer tangibility of the details, the observation, and above all the immensely impressive way that the "fabulous" or "occult" is woven into the tale make this impossible to resist. It's long haul, but you don't begrudge a page. The character of the cousin, James, seems to me one of the most tantalising and fascinating characters in modern literature. The narrator's own egotism and ignorance prevent him from seeing this too late. Some remarkable, perhaps impossible things are never fully explained, and that, my friends, is life. I've read this book three times in the last five years and I still get surprised by it. I still wonder that anyone can write this well. It's not the turns of phrase or any inbuilt sense of "importance", it's the magnetism of the story and the completeness of it. How many writers can REALLY fuse people, landscape, narrative, the elements and religious philosophy together like this. Precious few. Read this book!

This book fascinated me, I tore through it. Nobody was really likable, but the inner life of Charles Arrowby and his reflections on all of the characters made it easy to be generous. His actions toward people are often monstrous, and the people he deals with match him an eye for an eye. But his thoughts and his reflections on memory, his obsessions, his loves, ring so true and are so engaging that they overcome his flawed character.
The book, like Mr. Arrowby, does have some flaws. Much of it seems overtly contrived. However, it works somehow. Ms. Murdoch successfully caused me to suspend my disbelief when unblievable things were happening. Some of the mysticism was a bit much, and some of the symbolism was a bit overexplained.
But the connection that the book builds with the reader overcomes these flaws. It manages to dip its foot into that river of wisdom common to all real literature, but unspeakable and unexplainable - untranslatable from its form.
The Sea, The Sea first awed me with its asolutely amazing sentences, and then drew into understanding and sympathizing with people that I did not necessarily like. Despite its fantasy, its overt symbolism, its weird mysticism, and unlikable charaters, this book works, and I recommend it to everyone.

I started reading The Sea, The Sea, and halfway through, my boyfriend left it on a plane. I couldn't find another copy for almost a year, but meanwhile I read some of Murdoch's other novels, which I enjoyed. I've now read about 10 of her books, and The Sea, The Sea was by far the best-written and most moving. Murdoch closely scrutinized the minutiae of everyday life and managed to make it beautiful and worthy of consideration and appreciation. After finishing this book, I was unable to read her other novels for a while, because I thought so highly of it, but luckily I'm over that now. This novel may not appeal to some because Charles can be an infuriating and unsympathetic narrator, but ultimately his pure intentions redeem his extreme actions.

I read "The Sea, The Sea" during my Christmas break. I started out of a sense of duty. I had never read Murdoch, but knew that one ought to. A friend bought me a box set of Booker prize winners and, lured by a front cover that featured a moody, brooding seascape, I launched into the opening chapters. I had to work hard at first. As with so many "worthy" writers, Murdoch doesn't molly coddle the reader with early gratification. There is seductively beautiful description of a coastline that should be perfect, but is uncomfortably tainted in a way you can't quite put your finger on. A fictional world of theatreland populated by highly strung, egocentric luvvies is not immediately appealing. DON'T SKIP THIS PART THOUGH - it is vital to the completeness of the novel.

Part 2 begins on page 91. The gentle swell of Part 1 erupts into violent, threatening waves full of eddies and currents that shock, surprise, delight and toss you about disconcertingly like a piece of flotsam. At this point in the novel, I was drawn into Murdoch's world like a frightened child being drawn into a deep dark forest full of demons - terrified, but unable to conquer an overiding need to explore further.

The next two days of reading were the most unsettling I can remember since adolescence. There is a truth , a clarity of understanding of the destructive egoism in human nature that is truly chilling in its impact. The novel genuinely upset me in the way it peeled away the comforting skin of self delusion without any anaesthetic. One character alone, James, rises above a cacophony of self-centred, emotionally moribund personalities that are frustrated in their search for happiness by their inability to communicate. What is so depressing is that it all rings so true. Grand themes of morality, happiness, suffering, belief and almost anything else you can think of in the human condition are handled with astonishing assurance and understanding.

READ THIS NOVEL. It is upsetting, but it is also beautiful. It is big, it is gripping and you come away from it feeling you understand life a bit better than you did before. I can honestly say it has been the most significant book I have read since I first encountered "Moby Dick" twenty years ago! It has the same enormity of sweep and, like "Moby Dick", it luxuriates in the seemingly endless metaphorical possibilities and unlimited power of The Sea as an image.

I recommend this book as a first choice to any novice Iris Murdoch reader. The book is a wonderful and rare combination of intense emotions and light elegant style. Along with The Black Prince, The Sea, The Sea is one of the best pieces of modern literature I have ever read.

It's one of the best "Booker" winners I've read lately and that list is an amazing collection of modern literature "must-reads"!

What impressed me most is the projection of objectivity through the subjective narrative of the main character. Haven't we all at one time or another allowed "silly" obsessions to overtake our common sense? What The Sea reminds us, or me at least, is how crippling such blindness can be if we do not learn to "let go" and set proper priorities in our lives. And, hey, isn't it better to read a good book when one's still "young" than to wait until retirement all alone to the sea?

I'm not entirely sure how to describe this novel, though I absolutely loved every word of it. It's kind of about a 60-ish man named Charles Arrowby, who has retired from a glittering career in the London theater and gone to live by the sea. The book is his journal -- mostly focusing early on about his thoughts on women and how totally wonderful he is. At first, I liked him, then I realized he was the most egotistical and jealous person I have ever encountered -- the combination resulted, for him, in a trail of women totally mad about him that he used and then tossed. All but one, a woman named "Hartley," who dumped him first when they were both young and then became his life-long obsession. When he discovers her living in the village with a jealous and abusive husband, he goes completely crazy and tries to kidnap her and convince her to stay with him forever. I kept hoping he might learn from the experience that women aren't toys and that they don't all worship him just because HE thinks he's so great. He doesn't, though. The book ends with him totally unchanged by all the bizarre and tragic things that happen to him (and already on his way to hooking up with another woman who worships him). If this book hadn't been written the way it was, and I cannot describe what made it so, I would've tossed it aside in disgust over the main character's personality. But instead, I couldn't put it down. Remarkable -- that's the best word to describe it. Magical and bizarre. Read this book!