I very much enjoyed The Sea, The Sea. Iris Murdoch's adept writing talents are present throughout, and she utilises a skilful method of characterisation that almost creeps up on the reader. Despite the protagonist being a contemptuous person, I nevertheless felt rather sympathetic towards him. The first section of the book, entitled 'Prehistory', is very lengthy, and contains detailed trivialities. The information the reader is given seems at first to be inconsequential, but one later …showed first 75 words of 1017 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1017 total…- because there is no totality in reality, there can be no totality in fiction either. As the title of the postscript says, 'life goes on'. In the opening paragraph of this section, Charles reflects on this and sums it up perfectly: "Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never properly be tied, one is always producing new ones."