John Banville – The Sea

14 mars 2007

416 visites

Jean Pierre

Agrandir

Imprimer

John Banville – The Sea

Picador – 2005 - 264 pages

There is this house by the sea, the Cedars. Being there again, memories come back, as memories do, in a blur, in an apparent disorder. They create ties between distinct events, brought together by some subtle and mysterious links through the years, popping up from the past.

Somewhere in Ireland, the Narrator came back to the Cedars to pretend to finish a study on Bonnard. He was a French painter from the early twentieth century, whose paintings had the very same blur as fading memories. He was one of Proust’s contemporaries, the French writer known for his famous aunt’s cake whose taste brings long forgotten moments to life again.

Here no need of cake, just the sea, the sand, the tides, their many changing faces. And here they come, the ghosts walk out of the shade. The Narrator’s quarrelling parents. The disturbing Mrs Grace. The cruel Chloe and her mute twin brother. Anna the dying wife. The enigmatic Rose. They all played a part in making him what he is today.

It is all about memory, what remains in our life of those who counted so much at one time. Are they just gone ? Are they just surviving in our memory ? Are we just keeping them barely alive as long as we are thinking of them ? And as the story unfolds, we can sometimes see, a figure of long ago reappearing with so real a present form, as if the past had never really gone.

John Banville was awarded the 2005 Booker Prize for this novel. He has already been highly praised for his previous works, but this one deserved special attention. Its rich charming prose mixed with its delicate thoughts will please any sensitive readers.