Finished: The Sea, The Sea (Murdoch). An interesting book! It kept me reading anyway. I must say that I think the main character of the book, Charles Arrowby, is going to go on my Least Favorite Characters list. Not because he's evil or a murderer or anything. Just because he's so darn self-centered and egotistical! Of course, the book is basically a memoir or autobiography written by Charles Arrowby, so it would naturally be pretty self-absorbed. Some of his actions drive me crazy though!

Charles Arrowby is a 60ish successful actor and director who decides to retire from work and social life to a cottage by the sea where he will revel in being alone and writing his memoirs. In this small coastal village or northern England, he miraculously sees his first love, who he has not seen in 40 years, and who broke off their "engagement", shattering his heart. He has never been able to love in all the years since, despite his many relationships. Hartley, the woman, is now a 60ish woman, and much dowdier and aged looking than Charles. Charles becomes obsessed and convinces himself that Hartley is in an undesirable, near-abusive marriage, so he kidnaps her! He's sure that she will still be in love with him, as he is with her, and will run away with him. She is shocked and  unhappy and wants to go home, but he keeps her captive for a few days until friends finally convince him to let her go home. The entire thing is so selfish and egotistical! Plus, the many friends, old and new, who come in and out of the story have been victims of Charles' selfishness in one way or the other, but all still seem to love him. Anyway...there were many sad events and in the end, Charles reflects and decides maybe he wasn't still in love with Hartley after all, but just in love with the memory. A compelling book, but a bit sad as well. Murdoch's descriptions of the sea, though, were so wonderful! I think I appreciated them so much because I knew exactly what she was talking about at times....exactly how it feels to be standing on the beach in chilly Oregon and watching the Pacific waves pound! Here are a few snippets of her writing.

Charles' description of his father was so moving to me:

My father was a quiet bookish man and somehow the gentlest being I have ever encountered. I do not mean he was timid, though I suppose he was timid. He had a positive moral quality of gentleness. I can picture him now so clearly, bending down with his perpetual nervous smile to pick up a spider on a piece of paper and put it carefully out of the window or into some corner of the house where it would not be disturbed. I was his comrade, his reading companion, possibly the only person with whom he ever had a serious conversation. I always felt that we were in the same boat, adventuring along together. We read the same books and discussed them: children's books, adventure stories, then novels, history, biography, poetry, Shakespeare. We enjoyed and craved for each other's company. What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone's company you love them.

Charles' friend is analyzing him. Love this. :-)

   "The trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women, whereas I, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, do not."
   "I don't despise women. I was in love with all Shakespeare's heroines before I was twelve."
   "But they don't exist, dear man, that's the point. They live in the never-never land of art, all tricked out in Shakespeare's wit and wisdom, and mock us from there, filling us with false hopes and empty dreams. The real thing is spite and lies and arguments about money."

Charles thinking back on Hartley after she left him, and his first relationship afterwards with Clement:

And I thought of Hartley on her bicycle and of her pure truthful face as it was then, so strangely like and unlike her worn old face which had suffered and sinned away all those years when I was somewhere else with Clement and Rosina and Jeanne and Fritzie. I had invested so much, as the years went by, in my belief  in Hartley's goodness. Yet had I always cherished this icon? And I recalled now, dredged up out of the deep sea caves of memory, a conversation I had had about her with Clement. Yes, I had told Clement about Hartley. And Clement has said, "Put her away in your old toy cupboard now, my dear boy." My God, I could hear Clement's powerful resonant voice saying those words now, as if she were uttering them in the dark room. And I had put Hartley away, for a time. But I did not forget, and Hartley lay like a seed in my heart, and grew again, purified as of old.

Charles describing what it was like to spend the last month of Clement's life with her, both knowing she was dying any day:

That time of attentive mourning for her death was quite unlike the black blank horror of the thing itself. We had mourned together, trying to soothe each other's pain. But that shared pain was so much less than the torment of her vanishing, the terrible lived time of her eternal absence.

Sadly, how well I know those feelings! I have such admiration for these writers who can put such emotions into words. Five books to go of my top 100 authors. :-)