Product Description

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURNSIDE. When Charles Arrowby retires from his glittering career in the London theatre, he buys a remote house on the rocks by the sea. He hopes to escape from his tumultuous love affairs but unexpectedly bumps into his childhood sweetheart and sets his heart on destroying her marriage. His equilibrium is further disturbed when his friends all decide to come and keep him company and Charles finds his seaside idyll severely threatened by his obsessions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14844 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Review
'One of the best and most important writers writing in English...dazzlingly entertaining and inventive' The Times

Vogue
'A fantastic feat of imagination as well as a marvellous sustained piece of writing'

From the Publisher
'One of the best and most important writers writing in English-dazzlingly entertaining and inventive' The Times

Customer Reviews

Witty, camp, beautifully written and a great story
...and you can't ask for more than that..Okay, so it takes a while to get into, but that said, I am a very impatient reader, frequently prone to discarding my latest purchases before I hit Chapter Two, yet the lyrical style and spooky hallucinations were enough to get me hooked. Agreed, the Rosinas and the Peregrines and the Gilberts are pretentious and theatrical, but that's the very point - they are ironically observed. Moreover, it takes a truly talented writer to create characters full of vanity and self absorption and still make them likeable - and Charles Arrowby (the novel's 'I') is the worst - yet most entertaining - egotist of them all. This was the first Iris Murdoch I have read, and I am as quick to dismiss overly literary novels as the next person, but I thought this had what many of the genre lack - a great, page-turning story. And above all, it's very, very funny. Give it a go!

Overall, a wonderfully entertaining book, stunning use of the language and deeply insightful in places.
Considering that I count reading as my main hobby, or pastime, and considering that I would, at least privately, count myself as having been a reader of mainly quality books for all of my adult life - and I am now approaching 60 - I am at a loss as to how it can be that I have never read Iris Murdoch before. What brought me to her, finally, was seeing the wonderful (highly, highly recommended) film, "Iris", which deals mainly with Iris Murdoch's eventual mental deterioration under the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. It was clear from factual events portrayed in that film that hers was an extremely formidable intellect. So I resolved to read some of her work. This is the first. It will most certainly not be the last.

Winner of The Booker Prize (an accolade I sometimes find a little worrying in portent) and first published in 1978, "The Sea, The Sea" tells some of the story of Charles Arrowby's life, a recently retired maestro of the theatre, famous as actor, playwright and mainly as a much revered and feared director of the classics, Shakespeare in particular. At the relatively tender age of around 60, to the amazement and consternation of his friends and foes alike, he retires, more or less sells up, and buys a remote, antiquated, virtual ruin of a house standing on a rocky British seashore. From the hectic buzz and worldly comforts of his former existence he now moves to virtual isolation and precious few comforts, not even a telephone. Not even electricity. To pass his time he starts a diary, or a journal, or perhaps an autobiography; he is not sure himself . And this becomes our book.

The main theme of the book is about Charles Arrowby's obsession with a long lost, and now accidentally rediscovered, first-love. To say any more would be to spoil the story. And this is a real "story", in the grand tradition of story telling, a very high quality page-turner maintaining almost thriller-like suspense throughout. It becomes clear very soon, as one reads, that this is the work of a powerful mind. The prose is magical without being intimidating. The language is vast and glorious, although you will seldom need your dictionary. Each word seems totally apt in its usage.

The story is told by Charles himself, and the device of presenting it as a type of journal makes it clear and acceptable to the reader that he himself has no idea of what is going to happen next. It is as if he fills us in personally at the end of each day or so. In the narrative sections of the book Charles tells us the story in such an intimate way that we almost feel it's on a one-to-one basis; one can almost hear his voice, rich and mellifluous. To me, the narrative style could have been from an earlier and grander period (I'm not sure if this is IM's normal style, as I have not read anything else by her. Yet). There is also, at times, a definite staginess about it; meant literally, not critically. Characters (and what magnificent characters there are!) are introduced by the literary equivelent of an almost "enter-stage-left" technique, which, for this reader, added totally to the appeal of the book, and seemed most appropriate given the theatrical background of most of the characters.

Any complaints? Maybe at 502 pages it was a little long. I have no objections in principle to long books. At today's prices the more words per book the better ! But I felt that perhaps the story didn't quite support the full volume. But that is just a very minor quibble. Overall, a wonderfully entertaining book, stunning use of the language and deeply insightful in places.

A lyrical masterpiece
I was gripped after reading the first few pages of Murdoch's book, and immediately fell in love with her vivid descriptive style. The book cleverly shifts its shape as it develops and the characters are not who you think they are. Like the sea it has many layers. A haunting and lyrical masterpiece.