The Sea, by John Banville

The Sea, by John Banville

I loved this book. Of course, yet again, I am praising a book that has already been praised by those more worthy than I am. It won the Booker prize. I enjoyed this book from the first page. The story weaves backward from the narrator’s late middle age while at the same time forward from his adolescence. And yet this somehow works seamlessly. I found the adolescent story more compelling. A young boy is infatuated with an older woman and then discovers his true, and more appropriate, first love in her young daughter. At the same time we listen to him describe life after the death of his wife. In addition to the narrative, detailed characters, and gorgeous descriptions of place, this book had a fun surprise for me—vocabulary. Granted, the author is is from Ireland so some was regional but it was a fun challenge to encounter "flocculent" and have to check a dictionary just to be sure I really knew what it meant.

This is also a pick from my book club.