The Sea, by John Banville

Another excerpt from The Sea, by John Banville. I am beginning to realize the essential bleakness at the heart of the book. I think I resisted it, although it was apparent that it would not be a laugh-riot. This is a man grieving for his dead wife, and also haunted by some event in his childhood – that, frankly, it is taking him forever to reveal. I’m on page 145 with only 50 pages to go and I still don’t know what it was that happened back then that had such an impact. I know it’s coming … but he’s only giving it to me in drips and drabs. He had a crush on Mrs. Grace … and then transferred his love to the daughter, Chloe. They were 11 years old and were “going out”. Nothing earth-shattering … but you can tell that, on some level, time stopped for Max Morden – NOT when his wife died, but long long ago, in childhood. As he says in the first paragraph of the book “They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide.” The Grace kids were “the gods”. They had the same chaotic power of the Gods of old, the same dominating aspects … the same mix of benevolence and cruelty. So I don’t know what happened back there – the book goes back and forth (sometimes 3 times in one sentence) between Max now – who has moved to the town where he holidayed as a young kid, the scene of whatever it was that happened with the Graces … He has moved back here because he is at a loss at what to do after the death of his wife. But he also needs peace and quiet to work – and it is inconceivable that he could get anything done at his home, where he lived so long with his wife. But it is also apparent that he has moved back here to come to terms with … whatever happened back then. The day the gods departed. He is bombarded by sensations – the past as he remembers it bucking up against the reality before him (there was a kitchen here in this house back then? I have no memory of that …) … He is also, without saying it, achingly lonely for his wife. He doesn’t seem to have been terribly in love with her – as a matter of fact, he seemed a bit afraid of her, there was something in her that was cold and clear and beyond him … but without her he is a mess. He is a hypochondriac, and an insomniac – two things which have been made worse tenfold by the death of his wife. He stays in a boarding house in the summer town – the house where the Graces used to live. It is changed now. It is run by a woman named Miss Vavasour (great name) – and there are only two people living there – Max, and an old Colonel. The Colonel has been living there forever, and is ancient. He is obsessed with his own bodily functions, which is understandable – since he is so old. He kind of resents Max’s presence, and there’s a bit of jostling for position between them, but Max doesn’t have energy for a fight. He tries to settle in … but there is something ultimately unbearable about his life. I mean, he bears it, but it is unbearable nonetheless.

The following excerpt made me say “Wow” out loud when I finished it. Wow.

After dinner Miss Vavasour clears the table in a few broad fanciful passes – she is altogether too good for this kind of menial chore – while the Colonel and I sit in vague distress listening to our systems doing their best to deal with the insults with which they have just been served. Then Miss V. in stately fashion leads the way to the television room. This is a cheerless, ill-lit chamber which has a somehow subterranean atmosphere, and is always dank and cold. The furnishings too have an underground look to them, like things that subsided here over the years from some brighter place above. A chintz-covered sofa sprawls as if aghast, its two arms flung wide and cushions sagging. There is an armchair upholstered in plaid, and a small three-legged table with a dusty potted plant which I believe is a genuine aspidistra, the like of which I have not seen since since I do not know when, if ever. Miss Vavasour’s upright piano, its lid shut, stands against the back wall as if in tight-lipped resentment of its gaudy rival opposite, a mighty, gunmetal-grey Pixilate Panoramic which its owner regards with a mixture of pride and slightly shamed misgiving. On this set we watch the comedy shows, favouring the gentle ones repeated from twenty or thirty years ago. We sit in silence, the canned audiences doing our laughing for us. The jittering coloured light from the screen plays over our faces. We are rapt, as mindless as children. Tonight there was a programme on a place in Africa, the Serengeti Plain, I think it was, and its great elephant herds. What amazing beasts they are, a direct link surely to a time long before our time, when behemoths even bigger than they roared and rampaged through forest and swamp. In manner they are melancholy and yet seem covertly amused, at us, apparently. They lumber along placidly in single file, the trunk-tip of one daintily furled around the laughable piggy tail of its cousin in front. The young, hairier than their elders, trot contentedly between their mothers’ legs. If one set out to seek among our fellow-creatures, the land-bound ones, at least, for our very opposite, one would surely need look no further than the elephants. How is it we have allowed them to survive so long? Those sad little knowing eyes seem to invite one to pick up a blunderbuss. Yes, put a big bullet through there, or into one of those huge absurd flappy ears. Yes, yes, exterminate all the brutes, lop away at the tree of life until only the stump is left standing, then lovingly take the cleaver to that, too. Finish it all off.

You cunt, you fucking cunt, how could you go and leave me like this, floundering in my own foulness, with no one to save me from myself. How could you.

“A chintz-covered sofa sprawls as if aghast” …

Wow.

My other post about The Sea is here.

UPDATE: I just finished the book. I didn’t see the Miss Vavasour connection coming AT ALL. Has anyone else read the book? Did you guess? I literally said, “Oh my God” out loud when the information was revealed.

And then there is the mystery of what was going on with the twins, on the “day the gods departed”. Minor spoilers here: Did they say anything to one another while sitting for a moment together on the beach? Banville doesn’t say. It appears that they just sit quietly, and then stand up and walk into the ocean. Why? What happened? Do they truly believe they are “gods” – not of this earth?

But it was the Rose thing that really knocked me on my ass.

Sad. Sad book. Not just because of Chloe and Myles but because of what eventually will become of Max. And the nasty undertones to his relationship with his daughter … I had thought that that was maybe just a man being honest about his daughter’s failings. But no. He sensed the threat. He knew that eventually it would be her or him. Someone had to win.

Sheesh. Sad.