After forty long years, Mary Hartley Smith remains in Charles’ heart as his one true and only love, or so he claims. Los juicios sobre las personas no son jamás decisivos, surgen de resúmenes que inmediatamente hacen pensar en la necesidad de una reconsideración. Those more learned and enthused than I am can consider the symbolism of the serpent, the inner room, the broken mirror, and many nods to theatre, Shakespeare (Prospero, in The Tempest), and classical mythology (Perseus and Andromeda, Orpheus and Euridice, Plato’s cave), and whether freedom can be imposed.

I’m sure whole theses have been written about Charles’ cousin, James: he’s a fellow only child, but raised in far more privileged circumstances. A fin de cuentas, si él dice que le encanta su nueva vida tal y como es, ¿quién somos nosotros para dudar de algo que no podemos comprobar? Though, to be honest, we can speak mainly of the narrator’s character because everyone else is viewed from his point of view, and his point of view can’t be trusted.At each point the sea becomes more symbolic, both a portent and metaphor for both the action and the relationships. This 1978 Booker prize-winning novel - not that I care for book awards, but I thought I'd just mention it - was a feast of reading; rich, textured, deep characters, great writing, and a story that keep me intrigued throughout.

The enmity of matter is unleashed against the frail breakable crushable animal form, always perhaps an alien in this hard mineral gravitational scene. Parts of this are very funny, and one part where they are all wondering where on earth they can camp out in Charles's ramshackle house, is almost farcical.Near the end of the book, Charles's older cousin James tells him about "bardo", a kind of limbo or holding place for souls who are in between their journeys on the wheel of life. To some extent, we have lost the positive side of that now with our busy, materialistic 21st century world of superficiality, our overly competitive society where cooperation has been sacrificed for boastful procrastinations and gloss. Occasionally he tries to refocus his thoughts, and we get a potted history of his early rather dull life with his mother and father, and his more glamorous and outgoing Aunt Estelle, Uncle Abel and cousin James, whom he says he detests, but clearly envies. Her large brow, which looked white in the candlelight, was puckered and pitted with little shadows, but the way she had turned up the collar of her green cotton coat behind her hair gave her a girlish look.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, The Sea, The Sea brilliantly depicts the risks and self-deceptions of life, the precarious and important distinction between imagination and fantasy, and the vital importance of negotiating these dangers. He explores the ocean through the lens of his personal experiences to reveal the beauty, mystery, and political discourse surrounding the oceans of our world.Que Charles no es alguien de cuyo testimonio nos podemos fiar es evidente desde los primeros capítulos de The Sea, the Sea.

How often in life do we substitute our realities, our possibilities, for dreams, which are unreachable?The comic interventions of the minor characters, Charles's friends, begin to take on a grotesque quality.