Book Review: The Sea, The Sea

 

This book, which won the 1978 Booker Prize, is widely considered a modern classic, and has been on my long TBR list for many years. I lucked upon the audiobook version in my local library's collection, and it was read by the incomparable Richard E. Grant, so I have finally filled the gap over the course of the last fortnight, while driving, cooking, exercising, cleaning, walking, etc. And ... I Have Thoughts!

Let's start with some scenario-setting. The Sea, The Sea is the story of  the protagonist / narrator, Charles Arrowby, retired playwright / director, who has left behind his London life and removed to a remote coastal location and a run-down old house (Shruff End) he has bought with the intention of writing his memoirs and living as more or less a hermit. This is where the book opens, and for a short stretch, it's all lush literary descriptions of scenery and (quite enjoyably to me, a confirmed Hobbit) delicious food, which Arrowby is both dedicated to and hilariously reverse-pretentious about. 

The inkling that Arrowby might be a bit of shit starts growing early, with his supercilious snobbery and casual misogyny that permeates even offhand remarks (one of the other characters, Peregrine Arbelow, tells him at one point that “the trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women,” and this is absolutely on point, Arrowby's self-serving protestations aside). Every woman in the book, and some who are only mentioned, is done dirty by Arrowby in some way, often unforgiveably so. And it all comes down to this - Arrowby, despite proclaiming the purity of devotion to his One Great Love (Mary Fitch, nee Hartley Smith), doesn't understand in the slightest what love really is, and the book is a long, at times excruciating, poem to the dreadful dangers of arrogance, pride, self-regard, and misogyny disguised as cosmopolitanism.

As to what actually happens, it is a very odd but compelling combination of thriller/horror (where Arrowby, despite not seeming to realise it himself, is the villain) and farce. The collection of strays that wash up at Shruff End all have elements of both comedy and pathos, as do the ridiculous (intentionally so) scenarios they find themselves in. The main focus of the action is Arrowby's frankly horrific obsessive attempts to woo and win his first love (some 45 years after they parted) when he comes upon her unexpectedly in the village. Mary Fitch and her dour, emotionally violent husband, Ben, have, by complete chance, also retired to the village, and Arrowby, who has convinced himself that she was the truest and only love of his life, goes absolutely ham trying to win her. This includes not inconsiderable emotional and physical coercion, AND AN ACTUAL SUSTAINED KIDNAPPING. The real wonder is that this doesn't seem to strike any of his motley crew of guests (theatre friends Peregrine Arbelow and Gilbert Opian, actresses /past lovers Rosina Vamburgh and Lizzie Scherer, his military cousin General James Arrowby, and, as a strange set of circumstances have it, Mary and Ben's adopted son, Titus) as sufficiently bananapants to have him committed, or at least arrested.

I have noted already that, for a woman in a long, apparently happy, marriage herself, this book suggests that Iris Murdoch reeeeeeally didn't think much of men. With the exception of James (who's emotionally closed, a bit patronising and a mystical oddball, but ethical), and with a partial pass for Titus just because the ways in which he's problematic are mostly a result of extreme youth, every man in The Sea, The Sea is a king-sized misogynistic shit in different ways. Gilbert is weak and fawning and completely unwilling to stand up to evil.  Perry is a bloviating old sexist and implied abuser. Ben is a straight-up long-term emotional abuser and jealous arsehole. And Charles, of course, is by the far the worst of them all. 

That said, she is not much kinder to the women. Rosina is a salty middle-aged bitch who is not here to take any of the shit that any man tries to dish, and her capacity to hold a grudge is extraordinarily unhealthy, even if damn impressive. Poor sweet doormat Lizzie evoked my sympathy, but also some contempt - her overwrought declarations of love come off as unhinged and desperate, and her willingness to be stomped on again and again is very irritating. Mary (Hartley, as Arrowby calls her) is a beaten-down, vaguely hysterical, and not very intelligent lumpen elderly lady with absolutely nothing exceptional about her.

After the climatic incident of the book, which I won't spoil by naming here, the tone shifts towards reflection and contemplation. Following the madcap pace of the story to that point, this shift sat a little strangely for me as a reader, and I do feel Murdoch belaboured the point a bit. The final chapter in particular, where Arrowby reflects on his own actions and emotions and culpability, felt like it was slapping the reader in the face with connections that any reasonably astute person will have already made (such as the absolutely obvious link to Arrowby's childhood and his feelings about and relationship with his parents, and the unreality of his idealisation of Hartley being entwined with his panicked desire to regain his own lost youth, of which she is a symbol).

Overall, though, this is a masterpiece, and thoroughly deserves to be considered as such. The language is incredible, the storyline and characters intense and vivid, the descriptions achingly beautiful, and the psychodrama, as revealed by our unreliable narrator, is profound. I'm so glad I finally got around to it.

8.5/10 (deducting 0.5 for the final chapter, and 1 because it isn't a perfect book!)