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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
What a strange and beautiful book, at turns funny and heartwrenching, poignant and just plain awful. It has a cast of dramatic, theatrical characters. Its protagonist is both insufferably self-involved and touchingly lost. I still can't decide what I think.
Brilliant. Charles Arrowby is the perfect sympathetic a--hole. The setting is enchanting, the supporting cast members are interesting and real. I enjoyed Charles' searching for literary form in the early part of the novel.
The Hartley plot seems central but somehow isn't. It holds things together, but much more interesting things happen between Charles and James, Charles and Titus, Charles and Peregrine, Charles and Lizzie. This feels intentional. The whole book manages to feel at once spontaneous (even sloppy) and meticulously intentional.
It's about ego (as any fictional memoir is like to be), love, connections, relationships, mystery, aging, change, time, and (of course) the sea.
I wish it had gone on forever.
The Hartley plot seems central but somehow isn't. It holds things together, but much more interesting things happen between Charles and James, Charles and Titus, Charles and Peregrine, Charles and Lizzie. This feels intentional. The whole book manages to feel at once spontaneous (even sloppy) and meticulously intentional.
It's about ego (as any fictional memoir is like to be), love, connections, relationships, mystery, aging, change, time, and (of course) the sea.
I wish it had gone on forever.
I am quite a fan of books based on an unreliable narrator, especially one that emerges slowly like Charles. Even as he describes his simple life at his home on the sea with everything he is eating and doing in his journal, out of a seemingly realistic story comes a spooky sea monster that may portend a mystery story. As he continues to write and describe his former love affairs, my suspicions of his veracity grew. I loved Murdoch’s writing throughout and was glad to have chosen this book as my first experience reading her work. I have read through many reviews that describe the action of the story as the various characters from Charles’ past join the story and visit him at the sea. As I reflect on this unreliable narrator, though, I am still asking myself, Regardless of how much of the story is “true”, the book delves into the greater truths of the human experience and I loved every minute of it!
Spoiler
“did anything really happen in reality in this story (did all of those people really show up at his isolated house at the sea?), or was it all an effort on Charles’ part to work through his past and make himself look good through his memoirs? Did all of that happen with Hadley --- was she real? Did he kidnap Hadley, was it a different woman named Mary he terrorized, or did he imagine everything?” So far, I haven’t read reviews by others that read it that way, so I’m probably overthinking this and being overly suspicious of him as a narrator, but when he wrote so convincingly about seeing the sea monster again toward the end of the book, but then acknowledged that it couldn’t have happened, I started to wonder.
What in the Dostoevsky × Charlotte Brönte cross over did i just read-
This book really dragged me into places I wasn't comfortable in but it was excellent.
After hearing Iris Murdoch’s name come up several times in a book club I’m part of, I knew I wanted to pick up ‘The Sea, The Sea’ this summer. It’s my first Murdoch, and what a novel to begin with!
Charles Arrowby is an actor who has recently retired to a huge house by the sea, crumbling rocks and slippery steps all inclusive. Written in a date-less journal style, this book is his personal meditation – his memoirs – but is mostly an unreliable narration of his life as he navigates retirement and reflecting on his past, several, failed relationships. It’s full of chaotic self-reflection, gorgeous descriptions of questionable food combinations, elegant and moving nature passages, and a wild dive into his personal relationships. When he by chance comes across a past love, Charles descends into madness and steals her away from her husband. I felt utterly swept away by the poetic (mostly) mundane of it all, and you can certainly feel the sea as a character and poetic device of its own: characters, the plot, the world, all sway as much as the sea. The perfect read for these languid summer days, and I’m already looking forward to my next Murdoch.
Charles Arrowby is an actor who has recently retired to a huge house by the sea, crumbling rocks and slippery steps all inclusive. Written in a date-less journal style, this book is his personal meditation – his memoirs – but is mostly an unreliable narration of his life as he navigates retirement and reflecting on his past, several, failed relationships. It’s full of chaotic self-reflection, gorgeous descriptions of questionable food combinations, elegant and moving nature passages, and a wild dive into his personal relationships. When he by chance comes across a past love, Charles descends into madness and steals her away from her husband. I felt utterly swept away by the poetic (mostly) mundane of it all, and you can certainly feel the sea as a character and poetic device of its own: characters, the plot, the world, all sway as much as the sea. The perfect read for these languid summer days, and I’m already looking forward to my next Murdoch.
100 pages in and I frankly just don't want to read any more about the narcissistic, unpleasant Charles Arrowby. This was my first go at an Iris Murdoch and I might return to it but I have too many other books to be cracking on with.
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Overwhelmingly good. Murdoch takes such wicked delight in realising her vain misogynist narrator and even more in putting him – and the reader – through the ringer.
fühlt sich anmaßend und irre an, eine so meisterliche autorin zu kritisieren, weil auch dieses buch großartig gemacht ist. aber für mich war es im ausgang zu lang. und was im postscript nur kurz angerissen wurde - charles' reale liebe zu clement, im unterschied zu seiner fantasie von hartley - wäre so, so interessant gewesen. davon hätte ich gern etwas gehört: wie die fantasien auch im realen leben, in der gelingenden liebe mitspielen, uns treiben und täuschen, und wie wir ihnen vielleicht trotzdem manchmal entwischen.