This is a book to savour for its language. It has an affecting plot too. Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he had a childhood holiday. He's dealing with the recent loss of his wife, and finds himself confronting a drama, long suppressed, from that long-ago holiday. He made friends with the much more advantaged twins Myles and Chloe, who are not exactly the run-of-the-mills kids next door. This is a book about grief and lost love, to read slowly, and to become as haunted by as Max himself is by his memories. ( )

A book written in the abstract that won a prize (2005 Booker) given in the abstract.

The title gives everything away: this book is about the sea itself, making details like plot and meaning irrelevant. Told in 1P POV, the main character is bravely unlikable: a misogynist needing the approval of women, a crude child who abused animals and wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to other people who became an art historian, possibly seeking a place of beauty to hide from his own ugliness. No hero’s journey here: not so much a meditation as a rumination on memory as a fragile and eroding support pier amid ever-changing and indifferent tides.

The style (and this book is about style as the substance) can be both annoying in literary overkill and sweetly rewarding in lush prose: perhaps a reflection of life itself. None of the characters are all that interesting; like us, they are there and then they are not. I was excited to read this work right from the first paragraph, which was stunning, an unbelievable lesson on craft on so many levels. Ultimately, the book did not deliver for me. The thrill of the stylistic endeavor eventually waned and while I wanted to be carried off into the depths, everything stayed on the surface too much.

Two things prevented me from agreeing with the Booker Prize selection. 1) I’m too old — if I had read this book in my twenties, even my thirties, I would have been incredibly impressed. But any reasonably well-read person over, say, 45, has seen this overall or at least desired effect done before, with greater meaning. I did love how the narrator states outright that exact details really do not matter; 2) however much I truly enjoyed specific passages, appreciated how hard the author was working on my behalf, the book simply didn’t stay with me enough, and that is a final test for me. Kazuo Ishiguro's “Never Let Me Go” was shortlisted that year and probably would have won if “The Remains of the Day” hadn’t won previously.

It’s still a win for literature as art, as a novel presented on the same plane as a painting, but on an emotional level strangely vacant. Possibly that was the intent, as we’re all just flotsam anyway. ( )

Book opens with confusing contre-temps as the wild sea rises over the bay.

Readers may not ever be drawn to anyone writing "...in my misery." or
drawn to the over-erudite "...feral reek..."

Plot slowly moves from boring to disturbing portrayal of daughter, Claire.

Death pervades along with unjoyful sexual undertones tossed in the narrator's
remembrances of past gloom and doom.

I gave up on page 62 when he recounts how he secretly cruelly beat his own dog.

All this makes a Booker Prize?????????? ( )

Absolutely lovely book about love, death, memory and revisiting the past ( )

"Perhaps all life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it."

After the death of his wife Anna, Max returns to the seaside where he spent childhood summers fifty years ago. He is staying at the Cedars, where one memorable summer he befriended Chloe and Myles Grace and their parents Connie and Carlo who were living at the Cedars. As Max remembers and explores childhood haunts, we feel an impending tragedy will strike the children, something that will affect Max for the rest of his life.

I can't say that this is one of the better books on the 1001 List that I have read. It was well-written, but not one I deeply felt. One thing that really bothered me was the author's use of vocabulary. I think I have a better than average vocabulary, and I love learning new words, but the author seemed to bandy obscure words about just for the heck of it, and this bothered me and frequently took me out of the story. A few I Had to look up: flocculent; mihatory; greet; scurf; velutinous; anaglypta.

3 stars

First line: "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide."

Last line: "A nurse came out then to fetch me, and I turned and followed her inside, and it was as if I were walking into the sea." ( )