The
novel looked very appealing, both the title and the cover: THE SEA.
But in the end it was a disappointment.
This
review is very personal. My intention is to write down my
impressions, my most personal and irrational ones. In my free time, I
read in order to grow and
this novel did not feed my heart. Okay, the style is good, so is the
writer, but I do not read novels just for their form.
As
regards content, I would divide it in two parts. First, there is the
section of grief, loss and middle age, and then the rest which
concerns women. I really dislike the protagonist of the novel and
therefore I did not enjoy the novel at all because he is the only
narrator in the story. The rest of characters, which are mostly
women, are silenced.
I
hate the protagonist because he despises all the women who he could
not choose to be in his life. Especially, his daughter and his
mother. And, as I see it, it is because of their physical appearance.
When he is little, he is ashamed of his parents, especially of his mother.
"Had it been in my power I
would have cancelled my shaming parents on the spot, would have
popped them like bubbles of sea spray, my fat bare-faced mother and
my father whose body might have been made of lard."
And he is sort of repelled by his daughter because she is ugly. Beauty is love. Beauty is not a fact. Maybe it is a fact that each society has a beauty standard (for females only) by which women are measured. But, if a father loves his daughter and sees that she does not fit those beauty standards, should not that father rebel against those stupid norms that read that women should be adored on an artificial basis? Anyone not fitting them is to be laughed at. Good for that father. Disgusting.
“What age is she now,
twenty-something, I am not sure. She is very bright, quite the
blue-stocking. Not beautiful, however, I admitted that to myself long
ago. I cannot pretend this is not a disappointment, for I had hoped
that she would be another Anna. She is too tall and stark, her rusty
hair is coarse and untameable and stands out around her freckled face
in an unbecoming manner, and when she smiles she shows her upper gums
(...) With those spindly legs and big bum, that hair, the long neck
especially (...) she always makes me think, shamefacedly, of
Tenniel's drawing of Alice when she has taken a nibble from the magic
mushroom.Yet she is brave and makes the best of herself and the
world.”
Notice that the positive qualities of her daughter are summarised in one sentence, at the beginning, and then another single sentence at the end of the paragraph. In the middle, all those long, fastidious, childish comments that reduce her to an object. A useless object, according to him.
In
contrast, he deifies the Graces,
indeed, he even calls them “the gods”. To make things worse, what
attracts him about that family is not just their physical beauty but
also their money. You know, some of us working class people have our
own class-struggle epiphany in our lives, while some others grow to
be adults with the shame of having been born into a humble family,
although they do not admit it, their only goal in life is to ascend
the society stairs, instead of dreaming of a fairer society. Anyway,
going back to the protagonist of the novel, it is the same as regards
his wife, he adores her, mostly highlighting her shallow beauty.
Again, we do not hear her voice. Oh, yes, and her father is
rich...which adds to her beauty, I'm sure...
"How proud I was to be
seen with them, these divinities, for I thought of course that they
were the gods, so different were they from anyone I had hitherto
known. (...) My parents had not met Mr. And Mrs. Grace, nor would
they. People in a proper house did not mix with them."
Regarding
middle age, loss and grief, there are sentences, paragraphs and
sections which are really good because the author knows how to
capture the essence of a person suffering from them. But I am not
satisfied with that part either since the message is very
discouraging.
