One of the greatest books I've ever read. Beautiful, lyrical, sad. ( )

beautiful language and such detailed vivid descriptions of the sea. i could picture each character perfectly. i did find the main characater, charles arrowby, annoying and at times out of his mind. the book is mostly about his obsession with his first love, hartley, and how it has affected his whole life. a lot of the book is unbelievable but the sea lurking in the background and murdoch's writing make the book worthwhile. i can see that the book won the booker for being such an artistic and beautiful piece of writing. ( )

Contrived, but by a novelist at the height of her powers. The protagonist/narrator is an egoistical twerp, and his self-delusions wear a bit in the middle, but the book is packed with enough ideas and events to take the reader through to the end. ( )

a very interesting novel. ms. murdoch explores the dark side of love(?) and relationships. the main character in the name of saving his first love, from what he believes is a terrrible marriage is very emotionally abusive. this book remains be of loltia, in that we see the main character in both novels as human even though their behavior is abusive ( )

The protagonist of The Sea, The Sea is Charles Arrowby, a famous director now living alone by the sea, trying to escape the drama of life in the theatre. Drama follows him to his seaside retreat, partially due to unbelievable coincidences and partly through his own meddling. He is a completely unreliable narrator. He's inconsistent, delusional, and deceitful. This is where the fun comes in for the reader! Rather then simply being led along by the narrator, the reader must work to infer what's really happening and reinterpret the events that Charles himself misinterprets. Since the novel is in his voice throughout, the truth is not revealed at the end like in a detective novel. The reader has to live with the same uncertainty that Charles himself deals with.

I found The Sea, the Sea to be extremely similar to another of Murdoch's works, The Black Prince. Neither Charles nor Bradley, the narrator of The Black Prince, are particularly endearing, but I had far more trouble relating to Charles. Bradley, at least, was distinguished by his normality. Charles, on the other hand, is not only rich and famous, but completely over the top. He thinks to himself, "This would be the reasonable thing to do," then just as the reader is nodding her head in agreement, he does the complete opposite. While amusing at first, it soon becomes rather aggravating. If this sounds like it would drive you nuts, as it did me, try giving The Black Prince a read instead. ( )

Actor and director Charles Arrowby retires to the sea following a successful career in the theatre. He choses the location from memories of a former lovers stories of her life in the area as a child before her move to London and life on the stage. However he has not long been living in the village before he meets another former love, his childhood sweetheart Mary Hartley Smith, who had promised to marry him but instead broke off their engagement and disappeared, shortly to marry another man. Charles declares that he still loves her and sets his sights on destroying her marriage to Ben. Matters are complicated further by the demands of two more ex-lovers turning up and declaring both love and hate for Charles and an odd collection of friends, relatives, enemies and total strangers arriving to stay at the house and some kind of sea monster lurking in the waves outside.

I did like this book but found it very odd too. I'm not entirely sure why it won the Booker Prize. Charles was not a likable character and I can't say that any of the others were likable either. I loathed Lizzie for being such a soppy wet pushover and Hartley for being so weak. I also did not believe much of Charles's narration of events, he's an untrustworthy witness to his own life and to the lives of the others in the book.

The coincidences were a bit unbelievable too. Charles's lover Clement inspired him to move to the area where it just so happens another former girlfriend has moved to in retirement, his old chauffer is the brother of the man who owns the village pub, the adopted son of Mary and Ben suddenly decides to track Charles down right when it is most convenient for Charles to befriend him.

It has taken me awhile to get through the book, which was very different to the book I imagined it would be, but I do want to read it again at a later date and hopefully get more from it that I did at this first reading. ( )

This book sucked me in. I couldn't stop reading, even though Charles Arrowby's obsession with Hartely became annoying. His thoughts show how we can twist any evidence to fit our personal hypotheses. So why did I keep reading? I loved the description of the sea and the house and Charles' food preferences and the cars, etc. The plot twists, though extreme, were entertaining. I liked the blend of unusual plot and philosophy. I would have liked to know James better... ( )

1818 The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch (read 4 Dec 1983) (Booker prize in 1978) This book tells of a nutty guy whom I did not like who lived by the sea and tried to force his teenage girlfriend to leave her husband and come with him. The story just did not seem very interesting to me--I could not empathize with anyone therein. I don't know that I will read anything else by Murdoch, even though she has been called "the best British woman novelist writing today." Her first novel appeared in 1954 and I have never read anything of hers before. This book lists 18 previous novels. Will she be studied in English Lit in years to come, as George Eliot is? [I did subsequently read some other books of hers, though never with wild appreciation.] ( )

I read most of The Sea, the Sea on windswept beaches and secluded campsites. The book just exudes a sort of solitary other-worldliness, so the setting was just right. And what a book. First off, let me say that it is magnificently written, an impeccably crafted piece of literature (It won the Man Booker Prize.) And I loved it like one loves good art. But oh, the pain of reading it! Charles Arrowby, the protagonist, is a misogynistic, deluded, miserable and pompous old man, and since the novel is written in the first person, there’s really no getting away from him. But Murdoch writes guilelessly, making his personality utterly believable. As I was reading, I was caught up in pity, revulsion, compassion, and even glimmers of understanding as the real world fell away and I started to see the world through Charles Arrowby’s eyes.

The Sea, the Sea is the story of a quiet retirement gone horribly wrong. It’s the story of an aging actor/director who, Prospero-like, gives up his magic and artifice in search of tranquility and the simple life. But, while Shakespeare’s play ends with Prospero giving up his magery, Arrowby’s narrative starts there, and he soon finds out just how difficult this is. Even in retirement, Arrowby acts like a puppeteer, pulling strings to manipulate the people in his life. He lives in world of his own imagining that brooks no reality other than his own, a world that’s threatened with collapse when his machinations spiral out of control. In the end, it’s a story about love and attachment, and power of illusion. A fascinating book on its own, and even better, I think, if you know something about Buddhism or Eastern philosophy. ( )

This book, as so many things do, completely eludes any form of rating system. "I liked it"? Such a judgment (or its opposite, for example) seems farcically empty. Often personally terrifying, in spite of the fact that I felt no warmth whatsoever for most of the characters. Maybe that was the point. ( )

Charles Arrowby is a London theatre director who has recently retired to a seaside cottage in the south of England. He plans to write his memoirs, with particular focus on his lover-mentor, a woman named Clement. The book is written in the first person; Charles chronicles both day-to-day living in his cottage, and describes his life and loves. Vanity and jealousy are central themes. Charles spent his life immersed in theatre, entangled in complex relationships. His cousin James grew up in a more privileged environment and was a perennial cause of envy. Hartley was Charles' childhood sweetheart and, having been rejected by her as a young adult, Charles has been unable to deeply love anyone else. He toys with the affections of two actresses, Lizzie and Rosina, and fancies himself as having power over them when in fact, it is exactly the reverse.

The plot thickens when Charles meets up with Hartley, who surprisingly lives in the village near his cottage. She is married, with an adult son. But this does not stop Charles from pursuing her, and trying to re-create the happiness he felt as a teenager. Meanwhile James, Rosina, Lizzie, and others make frequent visits and try to talk sense into Charles. As Mary Kinzie writes in her introduction to the Penguin classic edition, Charles "violently and bullheadedly persists in all the wrong directions." None of his plans work out as he hopes. And as these plans unravel, he keeps trying to find another way to achieve his dreams. A climax of sorts occurs about 100 pages before the end, in which Peregrine, a theatre friend, calls him on his negative and manipulative behaviors: "You're an exploded myth. And you still think you're Genghis Khan! Laissez-moi rire. I can't think why I let you haunt me all these years. ... You never did anything for mankind, you never did anything for anybody except yourself." (p. 395)

Despite these character traits, Charles is not completely despicable. Iris Murdoch had a tremendous talent for portraying the middle-aged to older man and all his foibles, in a way that made the man mostly likeable. The Sea, the Sea also includes some interesting plot threads: Charles' pursuit of Hartley; Hartley's marriage; Hartley's son Titus; Charles' relationship with James, and so on. All in all, a satisfying read. ( )

A gorgeous atmosphere is evoked of a retired theatre director's seaside home. Too many of Murdoch's women seem to be either predatory hysterics, or downtrodden and passive. There were also a few too many coincidences in this novel, but it's an interesting study of jealousy, 'the sea serpent' and the self-delusion of projecting love where it doesn't exist. [March 2004] ( )

Beautiful Prose, but slow story. Unreliable narrator ( )

Another of this author's magnificent comedies of egoism. The monster ego in this book is the narrator, a retired actor and stage director. He goes to the country, and there discovers his first love. Being the kind of man he is, he kidnaps her.

Enter a dragon, add some mysticism, and heavy doses of mystery and weirdness, and you have one of Murdoch's best confections, a fiction that packs a wallop. ( )

TBR

I found this taut, fascinating, and as my first foray into Murdoch, I'm definitely going back for more. It's beautifully constructed and characterised. ( )

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