Beautifully written, interesting believable characters - but a bit hard to follow the plot / time line

I would lean toward this book no matter what because it includes a lot of writing about houses and nature .... and there are letters! The bonus is that it's a good story. At least I found it so. I don't know why I was disappointed in the last 25 pages. Nevertheless, I want to spend a year in Sea House. (By the way, this isn't the cover of the copy I have - a library discard - but it's the closest to the cover I do have, which is a lovely watercolor row of houses that continues on to the back cover and that perfectly reflects Max's wonderful painted scroll of houses. ( )

I really liked this quiet but deep book about a woman who goes to a seaside town for a vacation/escape and to work on a project researching an architect who lived in the town briefly. Lily is in a relationship that she's not sure is working and quickly gets wrapped up in the architect's letters to his wife. There is also an alternate timeline of about 50 years previous that follows this wife, Elsa, and a deaf artist named Max who meet in the same seaside town.

This book is full of secrets and it doesn't seem Freud's intent to ever really unearth all of them. Instead, the parallels between characters and the quiet unfolding of events peel back some of the layers of secrecy. There's drama here, but it's presented in an understated way. I found the writing very effective. I'm looking forward to reading more by [[Esther Freud]]. ( )

This is the third Esther Freud novel I've read, and they just keep getting better and better. This one is my favourite to date, and definitely a recommended starting point if you've not read any of her work before. Esther Freud comes from some serious pedigree - her father is the painter Lucian Freud, and Sigmund Freud was her great-grandfather.

There's a wistfulness to her writing that I just love. Her protagonists often tend to be soul searchers who are looking for a combination of the right soul mate and their perfect corner in the world. I said in my recent review of her book The Wild that there was an evocative sense of place, and this is so true of The Sea House as well. If I was to compare her to another writer, I'd say perhaps Anita Brookner or Iris Murdoch (in terms of The Sea, the Sea anyway).

This novel tells two connecting stories set in the same sleepy English village by the sea but separated by 50 years. A reluctant student architect rents a house in the village to study the work of a Jewish German architect who had built a home for himself and his wife in the village after WWII. Whilst reading his passionate love letters to his wife Elsa, her awareness of the flaws in her own relationship back in London is heightened, and the gulf between her new life in the village and her old relationship throws up some serious questions about the future.

Meanwhile, we also discover the reality of the architect's relationship with his wife, told through the perspective of an artist who befriends the couple whilst spending the summer in the village as a distraction from his sister's death.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The two interchanging stories worked well alongside each other, coming together in a satisfying conclusion, and the tension around the various relationships and passions played out wonderfully in the gentle backdrop of the idyllic seaside haven.

5 stars - a page-turner from the start. ( )

Some books just immediately envelop the reader in the story, and it's a full race to finish the story. Other books stop you at the gate. This book...well, my gate was locked and when it finally opened, BAM, the story took off so quickly I was practically inhaling the pages.

Whether this is what Esther Freud intended, I'm not sure, but I was not looking forward to the first half of the book. I dragged myself through it, noting the various characters and their surroundings and the world of art and architecture. Then the second half of the book was completely different, I couldn't wait to get through the pages.

Freud is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund and the daughter of Lucian, so that explains the psychology and the art. The story takes place in "Steerborough", which is really an invented name for the real village of Walberswick in Suffolk, England. Anyone who's been to that part of the isle knows how the sea is always battling the shore, and by the time I realized that raging water was the real star of the book, I was finished.

Although I really became involved in the book at the midpoint, I still only give it three stars as I just couldn't accept the sudden resolution to everyone's lives. That, perhaps, is more a defect of me as a reader than of the author, so I suggest my review not put off those willing to make it down the stretch.

Book Season = Winter (when the sea is angry) ( )