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The Sea

By John Banville

By John Banville

By John Banville

By John Banville

By John Banville
Read by John Lee

By John Banville
Read by John Lee

Best Seller

Part of Vintage International

Part of Vintage International

Paperback $17.00

Aug 15, 2006 | ISBN 9781400097029

Ebook $12.99

Dec 18, 2007 | ISBN 9780307429308

Audiobook Download $15.00

Aug 15, 2006 | 411 Minutes

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    The Sea by John Banville
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    Aug 15, 2006 | ISBN 9781400097029

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      Aug 15, 2006 | ISBN 9781400097029

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      Dec 18, 2007 | ISBN 9780307429308

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    About The Sea

    BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory” (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. 

    In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

    What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

    About The Sea

    BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory” (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. 

    In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

    What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

    About The Sea

    The author of The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory.The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy” of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.”What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer.

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    Reading Guide

    Also in Vintage International

    Answered Prayers
    The Rainbow

    Also in Vintage International

    Answered Prayers
    The Rainbow

    Also by John Banville

    The Singularities
    Mrs. Osmond
    Time Pieces
    The Blue Guitar
    The Book of Evidence, The Sea
    See all books by John Banville

    Also by John Banville

    The Singularities
    Mrs. Osmond
    Time Pieces
    The Blue Guitar
    The Book of Evidence, The Sea
    See all books by John Banville

    Also by John Banville

    The Singularities
    Mrs. Osmond
    Time Pieces
    The Blue Guitar
    The Book of Evidence, The Sea
    See all books by John Banville

    About John Banville

    JOHN BANVILLE, the author of seventeen novels, has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the Prince of… More about John Banville

    About John Banville

    JOHN BANVILLE, the author of seventeen novels, has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the Prince of… More about John Banville

    About John Banville

    JOHN BANVILLE, the author of seventeen novels, has been the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the Prince of… More about John Banville

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $17.00
    Published by Vintage
    Aug 15, 2006 | 208 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9781400097029

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $12.99
    Published by Vintage
    Dec 18, 2007 | 208 Pages | ISBN 9780307429308

    Category: Literary Fiction | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $15.00
    Published by Random House Audio
    Aug 15, 2006 | 411 Minutes | ISBN 9780739333785

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    Praise

    “Remarkable. . . . The power and strangeness and piercing beauty of [The Sea is] a wonder.” —The Washington Post Book World

    “With his fastidious wit and exquisite style, John Banville is the heir to Nabokov. . . . The Sea [is] his best novel so far.” —The Sunday Telegraph
    “A gem. . . . [The sea] is a presence on every page, its ceaseless undulations echoing constantly in the cadences of the prose. This novel shouldn’t simply be read. It needs to be heard, for its sound is intoxicating. . . . A winning work of art.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

    “The Sea offers an extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory. . . . Undeniably brilliant.” —USA Today

    Awards

    Booker Prize WINNER 2005

    Man Booker Prize WINNER 2005

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