The women in his life

We never grow up. I never did anyway.

John Banville, The Sea

When a man's beloved wife dies, would his mind focus mostly on women and girls from a lifetime ago? Somehow it almost makes sense in John Banville's 2005 novel The Sea.

Max Morden's wife, Anna, has just died after a long illness, and he is heartbroken. Yet this first-person novel focuses mostly on boyhood memories about a family that lived nearby during summers by the sea in Ireland. The family includes husband and wife, a twin boy and girl of about Max's age, and Rose, a young woman in her late teens, who helps care for the children.

Partly these memories seem an attempt to remember happier times. "Happiness was different in childhood," he says. His memories are also a record of his discovery of women, which eventually led him to Anna.

His first obsession is Connie Grace, the mother. His eyes follow her everywhere while he pretends to play with her children. Then he falls in love with Chloe, the daughter. Only later does Rose enter the picture, and this leads to Banville's interesting conclusion that, to some degree anyway, wraps everything up.

Banville's literary prose does not make easy reading, which is why he has had much more financial success with his wonderful mystery series featuring Quirke, an Irish pathologist. But for patient readers, The Sea has its rewards.