Sea, The Sea, The

It's cheaperInterestingThanks to our university syllabus for prescribing this book

A rare book. Excellent modern literature.

good

Good paper quality.

This book was one of the most boring, dull reads. Being a Booker prize winner by an acclaimed author, I went in with a lot of expectations. But the book was really really boring, I stuck with it till the end, but now hate myself for doing so.

Charles Arrowby retires from his career in theatre and retreats to Shruff End, an isolated cabin on the rocks overlooking the sea. But his quiet life is disrupted when he discovers his childhood flame, Hartley- now an old married woman, is his neighbour. Without knowing her feelings, he attempts to win her back and spends his days planning and plotting to elope with her. He comes to the conclusion that her marriage is not a happy one and believes that this will rescue her too.🔴 This book extremely honest. Charles Arrowby isn't a bad person but he is just lonely. Even after having a very successful career, a good company in his final days was all he sought and it was so evident from his thoughts. The demon that he saw in the sea reflected the tumult inside him.Hartley was a very quiet woman but the few words she spoke were piercing.Murdoch's writing is very powerful and will keep you hooked to the end. If you haven't read anything by Iris Murdoch, I would recommend you to start with this.

Lovely quality just as expected. Page quality is worth the price.

One of the best of Iris Murdoch

Auch wenn der Protagonist heute eher ein Schreckbild darstellt, gefällt die gekonnte ironische Brechung, die Vielschichtigkeit der Deutungsebenen. Ein großer Roman.

Arrived on time. Good quality.

Long, batshit crazy and shimmering with amazing lines and descriptions, this is an almighty slab of writing which is worth submersing yourself in. It's of its time but timeless, tedious but compelling, frightening and banal, often in the same paragraph. You have to be happy we live in a world where people publish things like this and, of course, where people write like this.I should just add that as a satire of self-important, pompous showbiz people, it's also really, really funny and fairly harsh.

Even though I gave this five stars, that does not mean that everyone will like this book.You are more likely to enjoy this book if you can enjoy a book with long, wandering descriptions, stream of consciousness such as Ulysses, or a meandering through someone else's life,. . I think that older people will understand the book better than younger people.If you need a plot, excitement, or need to understand what is going on at all times, this is not the book for you.I had to interrupt my reading of this book several times. I read it on Kindle and highlighted, not the great passages, but items that seemed significant in terms of understanding the characters and what was going on. In fact, after reading about 100 pages, I went back and skimmed/highlighted. This was helpful, especially since my reading was interrupted. I read the last 10% after a break of almost 5 months and was able to pick right up on the story. It seems that this would be a good way to read the book: read a bit and put it aside, then go back and read a bit more, or flip through the earlier parts and re read. If you are the type of person who thinks about life, and meaning, then you will enjoy this. I don't think I would have enjoyed this when I was younger, although, who knows? I have gone back and read many books that I read in my 20s and they seem to be different books. Maybe this book would be the same: one book for a young person and another for an older person. If a young person can get through it, it might be very educational and even helpful- not as a moral guide, but to put perspective on one's own life as it is lived.I'm going to make a stab at saying what this book is about. There are several summaries of the "plot". The interesting thing is that many of them vary except in the basic outlines. That is because one's reaction to this book is going to vary according to the level at which one reads it. I have only a superficial acquaintance with philosophy or mythology and several other areas of knowledge. I sense that there are many levels of understanding this book and no one will have access to all of them. What I do have is a broad experience of life, so that is what I was able to understand in this book.What I think is going on here is that Charles is talking about parts of his life, with an emphasis on his obsession with Hartley, a woman whom he loved as a young man, and whom he may still love. That is the superficial story. Meanwhile, other people come and go in his life. Many of them are also obsessed, often with him. Sometimes they are obsessed with other aspects of life: the theater, Buddhism, patriotism. Each time they come into his life, he thinks differently about them and often they are thinking differently about him. Unlike many novels, in this book, many of the "minor" characters have a character arc. The the arc is not like one that is satisfying in a Hollywood movie, it is an arc that is more closely aligned with the arc of one's life. It can be satisfying, or surprising, or stupid.As different things happen in his life, he reflects upon his relationship with Hartley differently,which serves to inform us,not so much about Hartley, as about the lead character and his own development. In the same way, the sea is not an objective inanimate object, but Charles' relationship with the sea reflects his mood and his thoughts. Charles also has many relationships with others. They start out at one point and continue to grow and develop in their own, separate lives. As they develop, they relate to him differently and he also changes his opinion about them, sometimes based on a re-thinking of past events, and sometimes in reaction to changes in that person. In the end, perhaps there is an answer, or perhaps it is random and doesn't make a neat story-like life.Nabokov once said something along the lines of that one needs to read a novel at least twice to truly understand it. This is one of the books that will bear re-reading and will probably give gifts on a second, third, or even fifth reading. It is great literature, and a great experience, but not for everyone.