This book was an impulse buy. I was browsing the new release shelves at Barnes and Noble when a book—The Singularities—caught my eye. With no former knowledge of Banville, I searched some online reviews and learned that he received the Man Booker Prize for his earlier work, The Sea. It seemed like the perfect type of book to read on a flight from Tulsa to Toronto. It absolutely was.

(An aside: as much as I love Amazon’s convenience, it lacks the serendipity of local book shelves. Free yourself from the recommendations algorithm. Go and browse!)

John Banville makes familiar words sing in unfamiliar timbre. His carefully constructed sentences do more than convey information, they evoke emotion. Take, for example, this lengthy sentence describing the feeling when an author enters a state of flow:

On occasion in the past, in moments of inexplicable transport, in my study, perhaps, at my desk, immersed in words, paltry as they may be, for even the second-rater is sometimes inspired, I had felt myself break through the membrane of mere consciousness into another state, one which had no name, where ordinary laws did not operate, where time moved differently if it moved at all, where I was neither alive nor the other thing and yet more vividly present than ever I could be in what we call, because we must, the real world. (72)

The Sea is the story of one man in two times. Max Morden, a sixty-year old man, just lost his wife to cancer. Seeking refuge, he returns to the place of his childhood. It’s here that we enter memory, exploring Morden’s relationship with the Graces—a wealthier family who summers near Max’s home.

Critics have called this “violent poetry” (Boston Globe), “deeply reflective” (Los Angeles Times Book Review, and “utterly absorbing” (London Review of Books). They’re all telling the truth. If you enjoy contemporary literary novels, the work of this Irish author should be on your shortlist.

Banville, John. The Sea. Vintage International, 2006.