Our book group choice for March 2025 is The Sea by John Banville. It is a haunting and elegiac exploration of memory, loss, and the deceptive nature of recollection. Following the recent death of his wife, Anna, art historian Max Morden retreats to the seaside town of Ballyless, the very place where he spent a formative summer as a young boy.
Here, amidst the familiar yet subtly altered landscape, he seeks solace and attempts to reconstruct the fragments of his past.
The sea, an ever-present and mutable entity, becomes a metaphor for the fluidity of memory, mirroring Max’s fragmented and unreliable recollections. He delves into the past, recalling the enigmatic Grace family—the flamboyant Carlo, the aloof Connie, and their captivating twins, Myles and Chloe—whose presence profoundly impacted his adolescence. The summer spent with them is a shimmering, almost dreamlike memory, interwoven with the present-day grief he endures.
Banville masterfully crafts a narrative that blurs the lines between past and present, reality and illusion. Max’s memories are not linear or precise; they are coloured by his emotional state, distorted by time, and imbued with a sense of melancholic ambiguity. The sea, the house, and the people of Ballyless become both anchors and mirages, reflecting Max’s internal turmoil.
As he grapples with Anna’s death and revisits the echoes of his youth, Max confronts the fragility of human connection and the enduring power of loss.
Discussion Questions
- Have you finished the book? Was it an enjoyable read?
- Does this feel like an Irish novel?
- By his own admission Max was an unreliable narrator. How much of what he says can we believe and does it really matter if his memories are confused?
- How much do we really know about Max? Is he reluctant to reveal too much about his younger self?
- The Grace family are referred to as ‘the gods’ and there is an obvious class difference between them and Max. Also, Max ultimately marries Anna who is from a wealthy family. There is also a suggestion that he has changed his name to Max (probably from something more mundane). Was he always deliberately seeking to climb the social ladder – or was that accidental?
- On learning that she is fatally ill, both Max and Anna are overcome by something he recognizes as embarrassment – her terminal diagnosis is described as ‘inappropriate’. Why should death be embarrassing?
- Guilt is another theme of the book. Is this the reason why Max has returned to Ballyless? If so, why do you think he waited 50 years? What other reasons might he had?
- Chloe is described as moody, prone to ‘sudden unnerving flashes of violence’. But was she just a normal, hormonal pre-teen? Is Max’s recollection affected by what ultimately happened to her?
- How did you enjoy the very descriptive, introspective style of writing? Were you annoyed by the lack of chapters?
- What, if anything, does the sea symbolise? Is the Sea a metaphor? Is it another character in the book? Is its role overplayed?
- Were you surprised to find that Chloe and Myles had died during that holiday?
- The end of the book comes packed with dramatic events –two deaths fifty years ago, Anna’s recent death and Max’s own near-death experience. Banville intertwines the all three story strands to reach their conclusions in the last few pages – how did you find this as a piece of writing?
- Did you anticipate that Rose and Miss Vavasour were one and the same? It is also revealed that Rose was in love with Connie Grace (not Carlo, as Max had supposed). Did these revelations change your perception of Max?
- Has Max had a contented life? If not, what does Max regret and is that regret triggered by Anna’s death?
- Do you interpret his drunken night walk on the beach as an attempt at suicide? Does his return to Bally less aid or impede his recovery from Anna’s death? Should he accept that what happened 50 years ago was simply fate?
- The book won the Booker prize in 2005 and it was up against LBG Pantheon entry, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, On Beauty by Zadie Smith, A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry, The Accidental by Ali Smith and Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. Do you think the judges made the right decision?
Individual Ratings
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