Mr. Banville's magnificently hypnotic poetic-prose transports one to another place, the profoundly palpable atmosphere that are the thoughts and memories of Max Mordem. While ruminating on the death of his wife and on his own life, Max Mordem reflects on a moment when he had gone swimming alone as a child, "As I stood there suddenly, no, not suddenly, but in a sort of driving heave, the whole sea surged, it was not a wave, but a smooth rolling swell that seemed to come up from the deeps, as if something vast down there had stirred itself, and I was lifted briefly and carried a little way toward the shore and then was set down on my feet as before, as if nothing had happened. And indeed nothing had happened, a momentous nothing, just another of the great world's shrugs of indifference." I am in awe of Mr. Banville's command of the English language. A translator will have his or her hands full to do "The Sea" justice.