- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd (26 Aug 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0241140722
- ISBN-13: 978-0241140727
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.2 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,234,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"An acclaimed and haunting tale of love and vengeance - from the author of the bestselling Silk * 'Baricco is an exemplary storyteller... [he] shows a Bertolucci-like, chair-hopping, gesticulating sense of sheer joy, that turns this tragic tale into a bittersweet tragicomedy.' - Time Out * 'Compelling, profound and sharply funny' - Stephanie Merritt, Observer * 'Highly romantic and breathtakingly lyrical' - New York Times Book Review * 'Baricco has produced a work of miraculously spun sugar, at which many people will gasp in admiration.' - Spectator"
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enigmatic and amazing. Ocean blue. Pure.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ocean Sea (Hardcover)
-Sometimes I wonder what are we waiting for. -For it to be too late, madame.I have read OCEANO MARE in its original language, but the grammatic is so clear that the translation can easily keep the beauty of Baricco's writing. It recalls the style fo the naturalists fo the XIX century. It is an original story. There are differents settings that runs parallel and then blend together. Several characters with different stories find a personal meaning in the ocean that can be either terrible or beautiful, gentle of furios, can carry joy oy death. A group of men abandoned on a boat; two men that look for the end or the beginning of the sea; storytellers that comes from the waves; lovers walking on the beach; children that know more than adults about everything; they are all connected to the ocean sea somehow. The book is strong and delicate. It goes beyond the love and hate human feel for the sea, it is a story that goes deep in the human soul, it is a rappresentation of the most secret desires, that goes beyond rational thinking. Enigmatic and pure. OCean blue. I loved it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fairy Tale of Astoundish Beauty!!!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ocean Sea (Hardcover)
It's the book I give to everyone I really love... because it's hard to find a novel, a poetry, and a piece of art all in one book!!! It talks of the love the goes beyond love, of the friendship that goes beyond friendship, and it will delight you with the music of its words... read it, it's too beautiful to be missed! Let it cuddle you in a land where nothing's real, but everything is far more cruel than you expected it to be... Make friends with the characters, Elisewein, the painters, the murderer, the lover... you'll never be able to forget this book!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful story,
By wendy alltoft (Beverley, East Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ocean Sea (Paperback)
Not quite the 5 stars that 'Silk' deserves, but this is a lovely rich story with wonderful characters.
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