Happy New Year and welcome to my first Manic Monday! Every Monday I pick a book and provide a little insight about it from a reader’s perspective.
Our book for today is my favorite book of all time, Ocean Sea by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, published by RCS MediaGroup (1993) and translated by Alastair McEwan.
Baricco is famous for his novel Silk, this book was made even before he published Silk.
Plot
The plot alone is a lot of things in its entirety that cannot be explained to you straight and with short amount of time. You see, the plot is both about the characters and the setting. And a bit about the circumstances that made the story work.
First, the characters. This book will introduce you to a lot of characters that will make themselves known n their own way. You will remember them after you read the book, and find yourself longing to talk to them again knowing there was no actual conversation
Plasson – the painter who paints the sea with sea. He dips is paintbrush in sea water and paints the sea around him everyday.
Bartleboom – the professor who travels to oceanside to study where the ocean ends and the beach starts. This is part of the Encyclopedia he is writing. Every night, he writes a love letter to the woman he will love forever, a woman he has yet to meet.
Plasson and Bartleboom are only 2 of the other characters of the book. I am trying hard not to continue typing the other characters for fear that my heart will burst and just tell you the whole story here.
The setting is both about the inn and the Ocean. The inn is located beside the Ocean where the story revolves. Somehow by having the inn specifically placed in that location is what geared the stories to work so perfectly.
Perhaps to explain in with clarity is saying that there are these characters staying for some days in the inn. You will know their journey as they find their way towards this destination, you will know them as they find themselves during the stay, and you will know yourself after the book.
The book also tackles about the therapeutic claims and mystery of the ocean. Baricco made a point to include some of the practices made in hopes of cure for physical and mental health. He also paints the book in a way that you will feel you are walking by the beach, slowly soaking yourself wet as you walk deeper into the water, letting go of all your worries and let the ocean have you.
How I Found It
I’ve read this book sometime about 2010 when one of my close friends was having a general cleaning in her place and wanted a bunch of books to give away. I “adopted ” a bunch of books and this is one of them.
Coincidentally, that year was a year of changes. A lot of things happened to me that year that made me realize, this book is special. Ever since I read this book, there is a serious longing of sorts. I need to have a copy nearby to give me comfort.
Why Read It ?
I am fond of stories, I’ve been telling stories before I could sing or dance. Ever since I was a little girl, I know a wanted to publish a book with a good story. But I never thought about how I should write it.
When I stumbled upon this book, I knew that this is how I wanted to write something.
You will be reading half of the book’s worth knowing the characters and I mean knowing them. They will be introduced to you individually with great detail. You will know why they are what they are, why they do certain things, and why they came to the inn.
The other half of the book is them crossing paths. All of them. And you will have a strong happiness building inside your belly, understanding why they are made that way. How it is very important to have each and every one of them inside this inn. You will realize in some way how everyone else in the real world is created uniquely and why you met certain people.
It will make you feel a lot of things. And I always believe whether it’s a book, a film, an event, a place, a person – if it makes you feel something, it is art. And this book is an art. It will make you feel hopeful, hurt, alive, broken, a whole bunch of feeling. But most importantly, longing. To read the book all over again.
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