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Ocean Sea
 
 

Ocean Sea (Paperback)

by Alessandro Baricco (Author), Alastair McEwen (Translator)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd (26 Aug 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0241140722
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241140727
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 744,928 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #19 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Baricco, Alessandro

    (Publishers and authors: Improve Your Sales)
  • Other Editions: Hardcover (1st American Ed) |  Paperback  |  Unknown Binding  |  All Editions


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 the Paperback edition.

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