By the Sea: By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Product Information

We see moments in which she drowns herself in memories and regrets over all that has gone wrong in her life, doubting her self worth and her role in the lives of others but we also witness how she picks herself up with the help of new friends, William and her daughters bringing her back to her present-day reality. We learn of the Cedars' current house-maid, Miss Vavasour, and her other tenant: a retired army Colonel, often described as a background character (even during his important role in the denouement).

Except for my girls, and maybe even them I had made up, I mean their graciousness to me and to each other, how did I know? Funny coincidence: I ran across her mention of the attack on the Capitol on the same day the hearings started and I began watching. The insightful, wise, unique and poignant woman we know and love as Lucy Barton is back in the fourth installment of the Amgash series. Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. And it's a persistent fascination, something Larkin described, in Poetry of Departures, as 'this audacious, purifying, elemental move,' the mere prospect of which left him 'flushed and stirred'.But really, did Lucy deserve to be attacked for assuming her heterosexual daughter was considering an affair with a man? Failing to remember makes the characters seem unreliable, but also very human in their flaws and weaknesses. She grapples with memories of her late husband, her parents, of all the decisions she made in her life.

I am a refugee," he tells the reader, "an asylum-seeker; these are not simple words, even if habit of hearing them makes them seem so.

Como el autor no aporta datos comprobables, de carácter “objetivo” de los hechos relatados/denunciados, las páginas, dedicadas a este menester (que son demasiadas, y se relatan en un tono demasiado relajado/neutral/ algunas veces irónico, que no encaja en el carácter de ninguno de los dos protagonistas), son totalmente innecesarias desde el punto de vista artístico (no aportan nada a la trama), y quedan como páginas de relleno para hacer el libro más voluminoso. It is the fixed perspective of exile that motors this, his sixth novel: by the time the central character opens the narrative, things have already fallen apart behind him. Hablan prácticamente de la misma manera, con el mismo tipo de voz, y es difícil saber quién de los dos está hablando en un momento dado.

Poor Lucy – it’s heartbreaking, but she reflects on these things with such insight and understanding it’s almost superhuman. The poetry of storytelling completes the picture of history, of how we see ourselves, rather than being an addendum to culture. The selection of The Sea for the Booker Prize was a satisfying victory for Banville, as his novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted in 1989 but lost to The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.It did what the best fiction does – take an experience entirely foreign to the reader and makes it vividly felt. The result is a complex story of family squabbles, resentment, and misunderstandings spanning generations. It's their pride and greed, hidden behind a veneer of religion and holiness, supported by a belief in their own perception of right. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart--the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love. I saw an older, more wiser, but maybe a more vulnerable Lucy, but still Lucy, and one of my favorite characters.

Loneliness, grief, longing, and loss pervade intertwined family stories as Lucy and William attempt to create new friendships in an initially hostile town.Gurnah's small town rhetoric is peppered with the effects colonialism has had and how the succession of power and independence failed miserably! Think of the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, now 5,000 years old and dense as ever with revelations; or the Odyssey (actually, Homer is said to have filched scenes from Gilgamesh). He later explained, "Whether The Sea is a successful work of art is not for me to say, but a work of art is what I set out to make. His novels, such as Paradise and Afterlives, tell of the traumas of emigration, diasporic identities, and the experience of loss. Clarity of perception alternates with doubt in a way that readers may recognise as vividly as the routines of bumped elbows, amateur hairdressing and DIY home plumbing.