Most of all it is about the depth and changeability of the Sea. The Sea that with one swoosh can take away all that we hold dear and understanding that we never held it in the first place. Book Wrap Mug - 11oz Mug Design - 3D Bookshelf Mug - 3D Sea Mug Wrap - 11oz Mug - Book Lover Mug - Coffee Mug - Gift for Book Reader Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core. Oh! And the words. I wanted to mention the words – some of them I had to jot down because I might need them some day: for a game (like when you have a whole slew of vowels – etiolate could be most helpful), or maybe just because certain words add clarity to what might be a more watery picture without them. This novel is a masterpiece of words used exactly as they should be precisely when they need to be.

The story is narrated by Max, a retired art critic, who is mourning the death of his wife, Anna, and now living at The Cedars, which he remembers from his youth. Whether recalling those days when he lived with his family in more modest surroundings and gawked eagerly into the house and its inhabitants, the Graces.

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Ever the director, Arrowby keeps casting himself and the people that surround him as if they were characters in one of his plays. The casting agrees with his desires but not necessarily with those of the others. Life is and is not a stage. We so want to believe that we can control it, that we can play the part of the director in our tragicomedies. The truth is that there are many players involved and they all have their own scripts in mind. Our hero spends the entire novel trying to reconcile himself to the idea. Does he? In his own words: I wish to thank my wonderful friend Seemita, who is truly an amazing reviewer, for inspiring me to read this book.

The world is not real until it is pushed through the mesh of language. It is a way of validating reality for myself. ~ John Banville in Drexel University interview.Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Hardcover) A sequence of jilted lovers visits and leaves, and the last's headlights reveals the woman herself: Hartley, now old, in the woman in town who Charles has kept walking by without noticing. A series of more or less enraptured humiliations. She accepted me as a supplicant at her shrine with disconcerting complacency… Her willful vagueness tormented and infuriated me.” I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.”

Max Morden is barely distinguishable from Alex Cleave in the Eclipse, Shroud, Ancient Light trilogy (Ancient Light reviewed HERE), who is apparently rather similar to Banville. Max and Alex narrate in exactly the same rambling, occasionally introspective, self-centred, curmudgeonly, largely guilt-free, and invariably misogynistic voice. The writing is sweet and sour. And beautiful. The mild hostility of the villagers does not worry me… They know who I am. But they have been at pains to exhibit indifference.” An ethical question: can we say that a child’s death can ‘strengthen’ a troubled marriage, if the child, now an adult, was the cause of most of the trouble?John Banville impresses with his beautiful, splendid and brittle writing. His protagonist Max is governed by his whims, which twists and weakens before its sorrowfulness, his mourning, the sutures of old dislikes, and the trace of his fossilized tears. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth, and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the harsh air's damagings." This charming celebration of the sea shows children how extraordinary our oceans are and is a reminder that it is up to us to keep it that way - shortlisted for Best Children's Book 5+ category in the Junior Design Awards 2019. Banville's protagonists are all men. In an interview, he explained that they all forged a new persona for themselves (hiding behind masks) and when a crisis or catastrophe occurs in their lives, they feel exposed and start to look for places, solid ground, to stand on, someplace where they, or some versions of themselves, will be real; where they stop to even in old age feel like delinquent boys. The Cedars was such a place for Max Morden. It was the place where he met his friends, Chloe and Myles Grace, with their parents Carlo and Constance, and their nanny, Rose. It was the place where children used laughter as a neutralizing force to tame terror. I read this book subjectively. I was emotionally involved like I was with the other lonely old curmudgeons in novels such as:

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.” Yet, he discovers that silence has been his companion his whole life. He knows and understands it like he has never known and understood anybody, including himself. Children will discover what they can do to help, and there are fantastic tips on how to live plastic-free as well. Kids will also get to craft their own recycled shopping bag too!

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Irish-born British writer, university lecturer and prolific and highly professional novelist, Iris Murdoch dealt with everyday ethical or moral issues, sometimes in the light of myths. As a writer, she was a perfectionist who did not allow editors to change her text. Murdoch produced 26 novels in 40 years, the last written while she was suffering from Alzheimer disease. Among meditations on losses and presages of death, we encounter once in a while a specter of happiness, might we dream of hope? Possibly this is too far to imagine, but even Banville protagonist’s wanderings remember to point to the existence of peace if not happiness. Like the sun that steals a chance to come through on an overcast and dark sky, with its rays reflecting alluringly in the tumultuous sea. How does Banville present us with a scene not so wistful, how can he, amidst so such melancholy, bring up moments of joy? His only escape is through remembrances of a long gone past: a past of friendship, a past with wisps of seduction, forgetting the losses that followed for mere moments. Those moments invariably invoke the sea with its vastness and its depths, along with its mysterious personal allure. This is not a long book, although it definitely is not one to attempt to rush through. The author sets the pace, takes control of this story, and doesn’t let it go for a moment. I was a very willing passenger on this journey with Max and there were times that something he said startled my own past memories into my reading experience. Countless times I had to set the book down and indulge in my own personal reveries. In most respects they weren’t connected to the story except by a small filament of invisible thread, yet once the thread was pulled into my sight, I had no choice but to follow it. We forgave each other for all that we were not. What more could be expected, in this vale of torments and tears? Do not look so worried, Anna said, I hated you, too, a little, we were human beings, after all. Yet for all that, I cannot rid myself of the convictions that we missed something, that I missed something, only I do not know what it might have been.