4 out of 5

So I promised myself I would start this review out by telling Mary Kinzie to fuck off to hell.  Not only does her ‘introduction’ to ‘The Sea’ spoil a rather pivotal plot point, but her wanky over-analytics, quoting entire paragraphs from the text, are undesirable for two reasons – first and foremost, they’re fucking boring as shit because they don’t have context.  Completely misunderstanding the concept of an intro, Kinzie – in her dry, wanky way – writes as though you’ve been through the book several times already, and thus are nodding in wanky agreement as she philosophizes and compares to high-falutin’ sources after reprinting lines and lines from the book that follows.  Secondly, by giving you this analysis before instead of after, you can’t help but have the interpretation in mind when you get to the mentioned passages, thus potentially tainting your own reading.

Way ta go, Mary.  ‘Tis a rare ability to indirectly tarnish a text for the reader via the introduction.

And now to the book.  ‘The Sea’ is Murdoch’s recounting of Charles Arrowby’s retirement from Broadway, to ‘Shruff’s End,’ a seaside, falling-apart manner far away from the glitz of London, wherein he plans to lead a perfectly composed and complete and isolated existence, and to perchance write his memoirs, which we are reading.  The book is divided into a ‘pre-history’ and ‘postscript,’ capping 6 ‘history’ chapters, the entirety of which covers Charles’ first days at his new home and the turgid series of events that would follow.  Arrowby, like many of Murdoch’s male leads, is well-off enough to live an okay life and self-obsessed.  But Murdoch’s obsession (or one of them) is in turning our day-to-day evils upon us: we must face that we are often just as full of the belief in our own Right Ways and Wrong Ways of doing things as Charles, as well as enriching our own wandering thoughts with the tinge of poetry, and thus we read ‘pre-history’s recounting of how to go about one’s day with the same fascination we take to gossip rags: we know Charles is silly; we wish we could be as full of self-certain vim; we reconfirm our own Right Ways and Wrong Ways and poetic wanderings.  The book takes a turn during ‘history,’ when the narrative – because it’s written by Charles – is fully derailed by his discovery of a childhood sweetheart, Hartley, living in town.  Although she’s married, and quite separate from his post-celebrity lifestyle, Charles immediately becomes wrapped up in plans to rekindle the love.  We follow these plans initially with a smile, as we can tell how off the mark he is, making mountains of emotions out of puppy love from ages past, and then with a building sense of worry and dread, as Arrowby crosses the line into blind obsession.  Murdoch toys with taking this to a breaking point – not in terms of action, as the book is rather marked but much inaction – but in how much of Charles’ bullshit we can swallow.  He is a fool, and then he’s a fool fooling himself that he’s in love.  There are stretches of pages which are almost painfully seeping in Charles’ Hartley-focused thoughts such that I thought my opinion on the text would be turned around… not wanting to pick up reading where I had left off… but each time I was just about to truly give up, Murdoch would bring in another character, or drop some admittedly surprising turn of events on us, and we suddenly get a fresh view of the situation.  Though it always only reconfirms our view that Charles is nuts, rather echoing the reader / character dynamic of ‘pre-history,’ but now within the text itself.  And these are all Murdochian characters, all self-obsessed in their own ways, and yet caught up in the scandal of Arrowby’s affairs.  Hilariously, for the man who had planned to isolate himself, Charles, at one point, is surrounded by 4 housemates, all who just happened to stop by…

This indirect humor pops up throughout, mixed by Murdoch’s sharp language, which was riddled with such casual scenes or lines of genius that my marking of pages started losing meaning…  When every few pages is dog-earred, you have trouble remembering what quote was where.

(So, yes, I get Mary Kinzie’s obsession, but I’m reviewing here.  Had this been an introduction, there would be more exclamation points and like 900 less words.)

But I don’t want to mislead – ‘history’ is tough to get through.  But it exists as such for a purpose.  We have to be totally ruined in regard to Charles in order for ‘postscript’ to be a believable followup to events…   Even though the focus is quite different – instead of self-certainty, Charles is now plagued with minute-by-minute reinterpretations of all that’s happened – it is just as fascinating as ‘pre-history.’

I can’t outright say that ‘The Sea, the Sea’ is something to run out and read.  And frankly, I can’t tell if I’ll ever read it again.  But some books that turn me around in their last chapters I’ll often feel like something could’ve been changed to make the read more seamless and enjoyable over all.  I can’t do that with this book.  The book needs to exist exactly as it does.  It is very much a journey, as are the other Murdoch books I’ve read; not a good trip or a bad trip per se, but a definite experience.  Though there is an extra edge… a jolt of frightening and funny realism on every page.  I shook my head in dismay, I grimaced, I chuckled at dumb jokes.  I’m not sure if we can ask more of a book than to do just that.