Shirley Curran
Alessandro Baricco‘s Ocean Sea is a haunting novel. The cover caught my eye and, as I flicked through a few pages, I was hooked. The style of writing is very different from that of other contemporary authors, except perhaps Garcia Marquez.
Baricco, whose first novel, Silk, won numerous literary awards, lives in Turin and is highly regarded for his newspaper and television journalism. He has also written and works in the field of musicology.
Ocean Sea introduces us to a number of unusual characters who come together in a strange establishment by the sea, the Almayer Inn, apparently run by children with extraordinary means of perception.
Book II at first seems to bear no relation to this strange collection of people as we witness extreme cruelty when a raft-load of people are abandoned by the lifeboat that was towing them. We witness violence and cannibalism, through the eyes of a sole survivor. I was reminded of a great favourite of mine, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.
Book III ties it all together. We understand what we have been subliminally aware of for some time. This is superb writing with a touch of magic realism and more than a touch of realism. It is to be thoroughly recommended.
GenevaLunch, 10 October 2011.
Filed under: Fiction
Tags: Alessandro Baricco, Italian fiction, Ocean Sea
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