The Sea, The Sea

Product Information

We have some surprising plot twists. There’s an accidental death, an attempted murder, and a death where it appears that the person ‘willed it.’

How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger.” But Murdoch’s writing is less sensuous than Banville’s, and Charles is a less sympathetic character. He’s not just a vain, self-centred, controlling, patronising, misogynist who slants and reinterprets events to fit what he wants to believe; he’s actively scheming, abusive, deliberately delusional, and switches between being oblivious to and relishing the disappointments and pain of others. I hate the falsity of ‘grand’ dinner parties where, amid much kissing, there is the appearance of intimacy where there is really none.”The answer doesn’t come, as is usually the case with such existential questions, but a throng of uninvited guests show up instead. A Buddhist cousin, a vitriolic ex lover, another ex, decidedly more doting, an old buddy with enough grudges to kill a friendship, an actor dying to serve his old master and commander, even a teenage boy eager to play the role of the son that never was. Most surprisingly of all, his first love, a woman from his distant past, turns up living a few doors up the hill. His isolation goes out the window but the irresistible prospect of reviving the purity of his long-lost youth rushes in, if only in his mind alone. It turns out that the woman (a rather dull creature compared to all the other colorful characters) doesn’t want to play the role of the resuscitator. Increasingly the reader becomes less aware that the novel is a journal, as it becomes a chronicle of the unfolding events. At each point the sea becomes more symbolic, both a portent and metaphor for both the action and the relationships. Take this powerful passage, which comes about three quarters of the way through the novel when arguably the most tragic event has taken place, and the viewpoint character is in despair, The life he’d foreseen — the windy, wave-beaten promontory, the sketchy “nature study,” the small gourmet treats (Iris Murdoch does wonders of sneaky characterization by having him gloat over his solitary, greedy, unappetizing menus), the lighthearted pleasure of torturing infatuated ex-mistresses — all begins to disintegrate, as people and nameless things from the past crowd into his field of vision. That’s beautiful. But in the very next paragraph things turn abruptly dark and mysterious: ‘I had written the above, destined to be the opening paragraph of my memoirs, when something happened which was so extraordinary and so horrible that I cannot bring myself to describe it . . .’ The hero, Charles Arrowby, is a retired and celebrated theatre director and, it goes almost without saying, a sentimental cynic and a monster of egotism.

He was a brave man. I cannot pretend I ever really loved him, but I do admire him for trying to kill me…” I suppose this is what Iris Murdoch means when she distinguishes between philosophy and fiction — that what the novel does superlatively is mirror our continuing confusion and muddle. From the original review of The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch by Lorna Sage in the Observer Sun, London, August 27, 1978: Hartley, the lost love, he casts in the role of an aging Andromeda; himself, of course, as Perseus. Her husband, Ben, is obviously the sea beast, though he can’t swim. Those more learned and enthused than I am can consider the symbolism of the serpent, the inner room, the broken mirror, and many nods to theatre, Shakespeare (Prospero, in The Tempest), and classical mythology (Perseus and Andromeda, Orpheus and Euridice, Plato’s cave), and whether freedom can be imposed. In addition:Murdoch can be considered an Irish author even though she grew up in and went to school in England. She was born in Ireland and both her parents were Irish. Murdoch’s novels teem with characters who are opaque to one another, confusingly impulsive, acting out ruptures in their supposedly intimate relationships or with their personal histories. It is common for us to meet them in moments of crisis, sometimes entering a space already filled by a group of people at odds with one another. In The Bell, her fourth novel, a young woman, Dora, reunites with her estranged husband in the setting of a lay religious community. Among those she meets are a teenage boy who, unbeknown to him, has been strategically placed to watch over a dissolute drunk; a woman (the drunk’s twin sister) set on becoming a nun and a man once in love with the drunk, and disgraced in the process. He spends his time writing a memoir that is a kind of diary and autobiography mixed in with copies of letters he sent or received; basically that is this book. Of course, we can’t trust this unreliable narrator; even he tells us his letters are “partly disingenuous, partly sincere.” For lunch, I may say, I ate and greatly enjoyed the following: anchovy paste on hot buttered toast, then baked beans and kidney beans with chopped celery, tomatoes, lemon juice, and olive oil. (really good olive oil is essential..." (this goes on for another 15 lines)