Charles Arrowby, retired playwright, actor and director, purchases a lonesome home on the English seacoast. There he begins a diary in which he reflects back upon his life and the people he has known. Abruptly the novel then becomes like a bizarre episode of "This Is Your Life" as several of these people show up on his doorstep. Charles Arrowby handles himself with perfect aplomb, until the most unexpected person of all appears.

I can nearly relate to Charles' age, and certainly to his love for solitude. I hope I can't relate to his self-centeredness and insensitivity, his quick judgements that dismiss others as more shallow than himself. Other than his father there is no one he has revered, except for one woman - the one person he will only mention in passing and not write about at all. It is she who appears at last. If you can recall a moment of love in your life that went left instead of going right, this novel is largely stemming that moment. When an opportunity comes that feels like a second chance, what then? Strange things begin to happen in and around Charles' home. A sea monster surfaces on the ocean. Decorations tumble and self-destruct. A face appears in a window and then is gone. And Charles gets his second chance.

Charles is not a nice man. His explanations for his renewed obsession are more like rationalizations, and there's a clear hypocricy in his reasoning. So long as it is others who are feeling driven to approach him and he who wants nothing to do with them, his responses are merely loathsome and unvarnished. When the shoe is on the other foot, he expects to be granted his desire and becomes a threatening figure. Lizzie and Rosina are fascinating externalizations of his own emerging issues: his blind indulgence in love, his jealous anger and irrationalism.

Memories and dreams are his primary drivers - like the sea, a wide placid surface into which he dives and swims, a sea that lets him go only reluctantly, often threatening to drown him, sometimes surprising with what rises to the surface. Mortality and rejection conspire to confront him with his egotism, but he is not remorseful even when he comes closest to penetrating his own illusions: "We must live by the light of our own self-satisfaction, through that secret vital busy inwardness which is even more remarkable than our reason." What doesn't accord can be shied away from, and there are always other illusions to be had. ( )

The world is a strange and beautiful and frightening and tragic and painful and unknown and banal and crowded place. There are old friends and enemies, unfamiliar new places, angry scenes and everyday meals. There is the weather. And also seals and sea monsters (maybe), and deaths, kidnapping and attempted murders (maybe). And love and desire too, of course, but often mixed with misunderstanding, jealousy, obsession and dependency in complicated combinations.

All of that is to say that 'The Sea, The Sea' represents all of the above in a story bordering on the quixotic and surreal in places, but is shot through with enough of the quotidian to keep it from slipping entirely into magical realism.

The writing seems effortless, the pages practically turn themselves, even in the first quarter or so of the book when nothing much seems to happen - as you would expect in a tiny coastal village - where the protagonist and narrator, a newly retired theatre director, tries to escape from his previous life. A revolving door cast of characters from that life then intrude, and the tone eventually becomes more frenetic, chaotic and eventually darker - even 'mad' - as our unreliable narrator falls into a whirlpool of his own fantasies and the unclear motives of others. Tragedy, reconciliations and betrayals bring the curtain down eventually, and the end peters out ambiguously.

Just like life. Brilliant. ( )

Charles Arrowby er på overfladen en succesfuld mand, der endelig har opgivet en glorværdig karriere for at leve afsondret og afslappet. Han har været teaterinstruktør i London – med gæstespil over det meste af verden – men nu har han fundet sig et gammelt hus ved en klippefyldt kyst. Tiden er inde til at skrive sine erindringer, nyde de daglige svømmeture og ellers bare læne sig tilbage.

Sådan er udgangspunktet i Havet Havet, som Iris Murdoch fik Bookerprisen for i 1979, men det viser sig selvfølgelig hurtigt, at tingene ikke er så enkle endda. For det første skinner det snart igennem, at Arrowbys selvbillede ikke rigtig holder stik. Han var muligvis succesfuld, men han var måske aldrig den store originale kunstner, som han havde drømt om at være. Og selvom han har haft mange kvinder, der stadig opsøger ham og forstyrrer hans ro, så har han aldrig rigtigt oplevet kærligheden som voksen. Tættest på har været forholdet til den ældre skuespiller Clemence, men selv det blev aldrig til et rigtigt samliv – og bag det lurer endnu større tab. Familie har han ikke meget af, faktisk er der stort sen kun en fætter James tilbage, og deres forhold er også komplekst. Charles’ forældre var aldrig lige så rige som James’, og Charles føler stadig spor af underlegenhed over for den militæruddannede fætter.

Alt dette er slemt nok, men bogen tager en voldsom drejning, da opdager Mary Hartley i landsbyen. Det er hans gamle kærlighed fra skoletiden, som han tilbragte al sin fritid med, inden han drog til London for at slå igennem som skuespiller. Hartley, som han kaldte hende, og som han stadig kalder hende, ville ikke have sex med ham, før hun blev 18, så de nåede aldrig af være sammen. Planen var, at de skulle giftes, når de blev voksne – eller måske var det altid kun hans plan? – men da tiden er inde, bryder hun forlovelsen og forsvinder sporløst.

Han har ikke set hende siden, men den gamle besættelse bliver lynhurtigt vakt til live igen. Hun er gift med Ben, der er krigsveteran og gået på pension, men det er ingen hindring for Charles. Han er desperat efter at tale med Hartley, og selvom hun beder ham blive væk, følger han efter hende og trænger sig på. Han er overbevist om - eller bilder sig selv ind – at Hartley fastholdes i et voldeligt ægteskab mod sin vilje, og han bliver besat af at befri hende, uanset om hun vil eller ej. Da Hartleys stedsøn og den gamle inderkreds fra London dukker op i huset ved havet til pinse balancerer historien mellem det absurde og det tragiske.

Charles Arrowby er åbenlyst en upålidelig fortæller, og gennem romanen bliver det også tydeligt, at han er meget dårligere til at gennemskue andre menneskers følelser og motiver, end han selv tror. Men det er aldrig entydigt. For eksempel er hans ønske om at redde Hartley uden tvivl drevet af egoistiske motiver, men det ændrer ikke på, at der ER noget ubehageligt ved hendes ægteskab. Det gør læsningen interessant, selvom nærmest alle bogens hovedpersoner er selvoptagede og ubehagelige. ( )

I knew nothing about this when I picked it up, other than it was famous. The cover said 'a rich, crowded, magical love story', but it is a twisted and painful tale of self delusion and cruelty. I guess it is a story that contains both magic and love, but that is not quite the same thing.

This book is 500 pages of living inside the head of Charles Arrowby. He is beautifully and painfully drawn, but deeply unlikable. Completely self obsessed, with no real model of how other people feel or want, he has bullied his way through his career in the theatre and now has retreated to the sea in retirement. A chance meeting with a long lost person from his childhood tips him over into obsession, from which much tragedy results. He ends a little older, and a little wiser, but still oh so very Charles. ( )

At first I didn't think that I was going to like this book but in the end it was a 4* read. The main character Charles was incredibly conceited! Despite the slow beginning and this obnoxious narrator, I became quite involved in the situation and characters. ( )