The Sea

The Sea is a novel by the award-winning Irish novelist John Banville. Banville’s narrative consists of an extended first-person reflection by the novel’s narrator, art scholar Max Morden. Aging and recently widowed, Morden struggles to come to terms with his wife Anna’s death from cancer, and this bereavement recalls the other great loss of his life: the death by drowning of his childhood love, Chloe, and her brother. A poignant reflection on the themes of loss and memory, the novel won the Booker Prize in 2005.

This guide refers to the 2005 Picador (UK) edition. Citations given are page numbers in this edition.

Plot Summary

The narrative is told in the first-person voice of the aging art historian Max Morden. Following the death of his wife, Anna, he returns to the seaside village where he spent his childhood summers, the scene of a formative childhood experience of love and loss. The narrative flows freely between three main time frames: the narrative present, with Max staying at the Cedars and revisiting the haunts of his youth; the childhood summer that he spent in the company of the Grace family; and Anna's final illness and death.

As a child, Max’s family returns to the same Irish seaside location for the summers, where his family have a chalet. There is a neighboring grand holiday villa, the Cedars, the tenants of which change. One August, the Cedars is taken by the Grace family, who Max idolizes. With their sophisticated wine drinking and their casually displayed touring map of France, they symbolize a life that is more affluent and cosmopolitan than his own. He dubs them “the Gods” and becomes infatuated with the mother of the family, Connie, gradually transferring his affections to her daughter, Chloe. Over the summer, he spends a great deal of time with Chloe and her mysterious, silent, twin brother, Myles. The Grace children are sexually curious and often seem cruel. They constantly torment their young governess, Rose.

These recollections are interspersed with Max’s memories of his marriage to Anna. Anna was very rich, due to her father’s morally dubious but successful business career. As a photographer, she created a series of portraits of Max that left him feeling violated and exposed. When she was hospitalized, she formed a collection of pictures she termed her “Indictment” that featured the deformed and mutilated bodies of the other patients in the hospital.

In the narrative present, Max is staying again at the Cedars, now a guesthouse run by the pretentiously genteel Miss Vavasour. He is supposed to be working on a book on Bonnard but has lost confidence in the project and believes he has nothing original to say. The only other paying guest, Colonel Blunden, presents himself as a bluff military type, but Max is suspicious that he is putting on an act. Max drinks heavily.

These three narrative strands reach a crisis. As a child, Max overhears a conversation between Rose and Connie that he interprets as meaning that Rose is in love with Mr. Grace. He tells the twins what he has found out. One day, when the tide is particularly high, he and Chloe begin kissing and touching. They are discovered by Rose. Chloe and Myles swim out to sea and are drowned. In the later time frame, Anna dies, and her last words are “They are stopping the clocks” and “I have stopped time” (240). In the present, Max has a particularly heavy drinking session, collapses on the beach, and hits his head. He is rescued by the Colonel and nursed by Miss Vavasour, who is revealed to be Rose. She tells Max that she was attracted to Connie, not Mr. Grace.

Max’s daughter arrives to take him away from the Cedars. She intends for him to live with her, refrain from drinking, and finish his book. The novel closes with Max’s recollection of standing outside the hospital just before he learns of his wife’s death. He also recalls paddling in the water and being momentarily lifted off his feet by a great surge in the sea. The sensation feels momentous but passes immediately, and he concludes that it is “just another of the great world’s shrugs of indifference” (264).