Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #761666 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Alessandro Baricco's celebrated debut, it was silk that exerted a fatal attraction. This time it's the ocean, whose watery charms cause an entire cast of characters to convene at the isolated Almayer Inn. The guests include a seductress, an eccentric professor, and a painter with a pronounced penchant for metaphysics. They're soon joined by the beautiful young daughter of a local aristocrat, who's been stricken with a mysterious illness. In a sense, however, all these characters are suffering from maladies--psychological, existential, erotic--which makes the Almayer Inn a kind of Magic Mountain with beachfront footage. The author is a renowned opera critic in his native Italy. Perhaps this accounts for his love of linguistic arias, which can overpower the plot of Ocean Sea. When Baricco gets rolling, of course, his intricately worked prose is a delight. Even the inn itself, situated alone on a promontory, gets the red carpet treatment: "So alone it was there, it seemed a thing forgotten. It was almost as if a procession of inns, of every kind and vintage, had passed by there one day, skirting the coast, when, out of tiredness, one had detached itself from the rest, and, as its travelling companions filed past, it decided to stop on that slight rise, yielding to its own weakness, bowing its head and waiting for the end." At his best, Baricco recalls Italo Calvino--there's the same pleasure in elegant riddles and rococo storytelling. Here and there the narrative of Ocean Sea vanishes down a dead end, and the author's weakness for typographical trickery doesn't help. Still, Baricco's novel remains a refreshing dunk in what Christina Stead called "the ocean of story"--and a brainy exploration of the littoral truth. --Bob Brandeis

Review
"An acclaimed and haunting tale of love and vengeance - from the author of the bestselling Silk * 'Baricco is an exemplary storyteller... [he] shows a Bertolucci-like, chair-hopping, gesticulating sense of sheer joy, that turns this tragic tale into a bittersweet tragicomedy.' - Time Out * 'Compelling, profound and sharply funny' - Stephanie Merritt, Observer * 'Highly romantic and breathtakingly lyrical' - New York Times Book Review * 'Baricco has produced a work of miraculously spun sugar, at which many people will gasp in admiration.' - Spectator"

Customer Reviews

Enigmatic and amazing. Ocean blue. Pure.
-Sometimes I wonder what are we waiting for. -For it to be too late, madame.

I have read OCEANO MARE in its original language, but the grammatic is so clear that the translation can easily keep the beauty of Baricco's writing. It recalls the style fo the naturalists fo the XIX century. It is an original story. There are differents settings that runs parallel and then blend together. Several characters with different stories find a personal meaning in the ocean that can be either terrible or beautiful, gentle of furios, can carry joy oy death. A group of men abandoned on a boat; two men that look for the end or the beginning of the sea; storytellers that comes from the waves; lovers walking on the beach; children that know more than adults about everything; they are all connected to the ocean sea somehow. The book is strong and delicate. It goes beyond the love and hate human feel for the sea, it is a story that goes deep in the human soul, it is a rappresentation of the most secret desires, that goes beyond rational thinking. Enigmatic and pure. OCean blue. I loved it.

A Fairy Tale of Astoundish Beauty!!!
It's the book I give to everyone I really love... because it's hard to find a novel, a poetry, and a piece of art all in one book!!! It talks of the love the goes beyond love, of the friendship that goes beyond friendship, and it will delight you with the music of its words... read it, it's too beautiful to be missed! Let it cuddle you in a land where nothing's real, but everything is far more cruel than you expected it to be... Make friends with the characters, Elisewein, the painters, the murderer, the lover... you'll never be able to forget this book!

SEEING THE SEA
Some never see it. The sea in their hart. But never mind, those who see it still have books. But they also have troubles sometimes. For example : You have been for years in your library. You regularly read the book-pages of some newspapers and magazines. You're even a librarian, as I am, of a quite (would-be) modern (semi-public) library. Yes, you might even be me. And like me, you have never remarked Ocean Sea of this Italian author of whom you've never heard, until an engimatic but wise woman, your teacher Drama at the local Academy of Arts, tells you they are going to bring it on stage (written by who ? everyone yells, and then : never heard of, very difficult, sakespeare-like I presume ... ). And then you read it, and you really see the sea. Experiencing it on scene makes it even worse : escaping this yearning feeling to tell everyone you meet they absolutely must read this book becomes impossible. And in every letter you write to your many pals, you can't stop mentioning Plasson, the painter who wants to leave his canvas white but not blanco, or others. This story is all about puzzles : pieces coming together and breaking up. It's about leaving things undefined. It's about the sea : you can dive in it, you get a little bit wet, but you can't breath under the sea, unless you wear an O2-mask, and even then. Some books take you up in the air and leave you there. Some put you down to the ground and under it. This one makes you feel alive and you keep reading it. This one you want to share with your best friends. And you would even want to e-mail on it. But you will never give it away. I promise !