Banville's Sea

Week 8. John Banville, The Sea (2005)

‘It is a literary work of art’ – Rick Gekoski

‘Yesterday the Man Booker judges made possibly the worst, certainly the most perverse, and perhaps the most indefensible choice in the 36-year history of the contest’ – Boyd Tonkin

John Banville was born in Wexford in 1945. One of the most widely-admired Irish novelists of his generation, he had been shortlisted for the Booker only once before, for The Book of Evidence in 1989, losing out to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.

Editions:

John Banville, The Sea, (London: Picador, 2005; London: Picador, 2006).

2005 Shortlist:

John Banville, The Sea
Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Ali Smith, The Accidental
Zadie Smith, On Beauty

2005 Judges:
John Sutherland (chair), Lindsay Duguid, Rick Gekoski, Josephine Hart, David Sexton

Topics:

· Literature and Passion.
· Irish Writing and Modernist Tradition.
· ‘High Art’ vs. the Beachbound Pageturner?

Reviews:

Allan Massie, ‘Point of No Return’, The Scotsman, (28 May 2005)
Peter Conradi, ‘Homeward Bound’, The Independent, (3 June 2005)
Tibor Fischer, ‘Wave after Wave of Vocabulary’, The Daily Telegraph, (7 June 2005)
David Grylls, ‘Fiction: The Sea by John Banville’, The Sunday Times, (12 June 2005)
Finn Fordham (our very own), ‘High Tidings’, The Guardian, (25 June 2005)
Michiko Kakutani, ‘A Wordy Widower with a Past’, New York Times, (1 November 2005)