- Hardcover: 241 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Feb 2 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375404236
- ISBN-13: 978-0375404238
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 15 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #496,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In Alessandro Baricco's celebrated debut, it was silk that exerted a fatal attraction. This time it's the ocean, whose watery charms cause an entire cast of characters to convene at the isolated Almayer Inn. The guests include a seductress, an eccentric professor, and a painter with a pronounced penchant for metaphysics. They're soon joined by the beautiful young daughter of a local aristocrat, who's been stricken with a mysterious illness. In a sense, however, all these characters are suffering from maladies--psychological, existential, erotic--which makes the Almayer Inn a kind of Magic Mountain with beachfront footage.
The author is a renowned opera critic in his native Italy. Perhaps this accounts for his love of linguistic arias, which can overpower the plot of Ocean Sea. When Baricco gets rolling, of course, his intricately worked prose is a delight. Even the inn itself, situated alone on a promontory, gets the red carpet treatment: "So alone it was there, it seemed a thing forgotten. It was almost as if a procession of inns, of every kind and vintage, had passed by there one day, skirting the coast, when, out of tiredness, one had detached itself from the rest, and, as its travelling companions filed past, it decided to stop on that slight rise, yielding to its own weakness, bowing its head and waiting for the end." At his best, Baricco recalls Italo Calvino--there's the same pleasure in elegant riddles and rococo storytelling. Here and there the narrative of Ocean Sea vanishes down a dead end, and the author's weakness for typographical trickery doesn't help. Still, Baricco's novel remains a refreshing dunk in what Christina Stead called "the ocean of story"--and a brainy exploration of the littoral truth. --Bob Brandeis
From Publishers Weekly
Italian writer Baricco, who wrote this novel before the highly regarded Silk, again delivers a work whose spare, lyrical language and enigmatic episodes culminate in a tale of love and revenge. This story of obsession is a meditation on the sea?its seductive surface and erotic depths with the power to heal or destroy. Mirroring the ebb and flow of the ocean, Baricco's cast of characters complement each other. In 19th-century France, six people are drawn, each for distinct reasons, to a seaside hotel?inhabited only by four precocious, spiritlike children. Researching his scientific book, An Encyclopedia of Limits, Professor Bartleboom seeks the point at which the sea ends; painter Plasson is determined to find where the sea begins. Ann Deveria has been sent by her husband to repent her adulturous ways, while Elisewin, a young, sickly girl, experiences her first love and finds her health restored. Father Pluche, the priest who accompanies Elisewin, discovers the meaning of life; a secretive sailor, Adams, searches for death. For each person, the "sea is a place where you take leave of yourself" in search of his or her mystery; yet each character's story of love, betrayal, murder or redemption is revealed to be inexorably entangled with the others' while the sea bears silent witness to their destinies. It is only through the ripples of Adams's vengeful act that each person realizes his or her destiny. Baricco's prose stylistically echoes his central metaphor: his sentences undulating, breaking and subsiding, a mood that translator McEwan maneuvers beautifully. At times this feat is accomplished masterfully; at others the author's hand is all too apparent, eclipsing the delicate mingling of his intriguing characters with their vengeful and poetic twists of fate.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
good dream,
By
This review is from: Ocean Sea (Paperback)
unusual, dreamlike piece of writing. the author isn't particularly concerned with characterisation, and his characters are of interest only in so far as they represent a particular activity or condition; the aristocratic girl has her peculiar illness, the painter his wish to paint the beginning of the sea, the professor, neatly enough, his wish to measure the end of it. Baricco's characters drift around the narrative like disembodied ghosts, but perhaps this just serves to add to the hallucinatory quality of the novel, where several of the characters actually are ghosts and the action takes place in a point outside time. the second half of the book's chapters on cannibalism give excellent demonstration of the author's artistic boldness and poetic skills. and poetic is perhaps the important word here. lovers of poetry will enjoy this book, those looking for more conventional 'plot and characterisation based' prose may struggle with it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreakingly beautiful. Poetry meets prose.,
By
This review is from: Ocean Sea (Paperback)
Never before has a novel moved me so deeply with just two pages of its prose. The author is so good (and the translator too) that I found myself tasting brand-new emotions, new flavors of heartbreakingly wistful love, through these words.At times the story itself is heavy-handed and unimpressive. And the book is rather short, and the chapters don't all hang together so well. But the layers of meaning, the metaphors and above all the well-described emotions, put Ocean Sea in the highest stratum of literary novels. It's that good. It's the sort of book that you'll want to give to a friend after you finish it, and then you'll want to buy another copy for yourself because you don't want to be without it.
3.0 out of 5 stars
it's good, truly it is, but...,
By
This review is from: Ocean Sea (Paperback)
so here's the thing. this is a fun little read. entertaining etc... others have played up the good qualities far better than i. but (and there is a but) there's some comparisons that have just gotten out of hand, particularly the comparisons to calvino and calasso. baricco does not particularly remind me of calasso-- baricco's swooping, ebbing style has precious little to do with calasso's equally curious, yet ultimately tighter-- more restrained, approach. truth be told, i prefer calasso. and calvino-- well, calvino is on another plane altogether-- as one of the most interesting, playful, original authors of the 20th century. failure to live up to calvino's stature is no critique-- few authors do-- but to mention barrico as one who approaches such a level may be a bit excessive. nevertheless there's some fascinating moments here, and some perfect passages, but it's also a bit flawed. worth reading if think you'd dig it (esp. given the other reviews), but again it's not calvino, it's not quite calasso, and it's far from a five star read. all that said, it can stand as its own work, and i do look forward to baricco's next work. should he achieve beyond this level, that may be something!
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