The Genius of the Sea: A Novel

by Naeem Murr

Daniel Mulvaugh is drawn to Amos Radcliff, an ex-merchant marine whose tales of life on the high seas provides comfort for all Daniel regrets in life.

Genres: Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 3, 2003

About the author

Naeem Murrʼs first novel, The Boy, was a New York Times Notable Book. Another novel, The Genius of the Sea, was published in 2003. His latest, The Perfect Man, was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His work has been translated into eight languages. He has received many awards for his writing, most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pen Beyond Margins Award. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Missouri, Western Michigan, and Northwestern University, among others. Born and brought up in London, he has lived in America since his early twenties, and currently resides in Chicago.

Photo: copyright Alan Cross.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

As he’d sat there, keeping her and himself in suspension, a word had come to him, beautifully new and suggestive: grief. How many lifetimes, he wondered now, would one have to live to learn every word as well as that?
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I was trying to rid myself of what remained of my heart.

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Sometimes, there's nothing you want more than silence.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5. This novel features two very interesting characters characters in Daniel and Amos, an interesting theme, and some beautiful prose. I found the story to be somewhat difficult to follow, and the ending feels dissatisfying and unearned.
*

“‘Andrew,’ I persisted, ‘a ship is a closed world. A voyage is like a small lifetime.’” (p. 247).

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Citation:
Murr, N. (2015). The genius of the sea. The Free Press/Simon & Schuster. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00... (Original Work Published 2003)

Title: The Genius of the Sea
Author(s): Naeem Murr
Year: 2003
Genre: Fiction - Novel
Page count: 304 pages
Date(s) read: 11/4/23 - 11/8/23
Book #215 in 2023
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Additional quotes:
"Then those East End mums, with their brutal bosoms, waded in." (p. 5)
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"As he’d sat there, keeping her and himself in suspension, a word had come to him, beautifully new and suggestive: grief. How many lifetimes, he wondered now, would one have to live to learn every word as well at that?" (p . 17)
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"Standing, she shed the child, ascended years, arrived finally at the brittle grace of one who has lived a little too long." (p . 18)
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“…he’d been able to feel for nothing but what he’d lost. It had made social work a nightmare for him. He’d found himself increasingly incapable of responding to the lies and half lies of his clients, or even to those things that couldn’t be true but were. He couldn’t find a way to believe what he was being told, to believe, more frankly, in their lives.” (p . 19)
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"An awful moment: it was as if Richard had surfaced for the first and perhaps only time from his general ease and humor, from the lie of his life, with a single, salvaged, useless truth." (p. 96).
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"But I’m not sure she was able to feel that ecstatic fear most of us call love. She had more concrete fears to deal with." (p . 138)
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“On the morning of the seventh day, we awoke to a strange light, an eerie silence and complete calm. When I climbed out of the hatch, I saw a yellowish sickness in the sky." (p. 143).
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“Well, anyway . . . anyway, this began my literary education. She read to me every chance she could: most of Shakespeare, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Jude the Obscure, The House of Mirth, Precious Bane—are you a reader, Daniel?”
Daniel almost said yes. He’d once loved language, and there had been a time in the years after his mother’s death when he’d lost himself in literature—fiction particularly. But as he read more, the authors seemed able to reveal and suggest less, became too human, their books a preserved rather than a living mystery; or was it just that what mystery they contained had resonated too inexplicably, painfully with his own?
“No,” Daniel said. “Haven’t picked up a book in years.”
“But you can read?”
“Of course I can.”
“You just don’t?” Amos was clearly perplexed.
“Lost the taste for it.”
“Then you should have someone read to you,” he said. (p. 150).

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“You seem fascinated by language,” Daniel said.
“Yes, I suppose I am,” Amos replied. “Perhaps because it’s been, in some ways, so unavailable to me.”
Amos went quiet, looking into his own lap. Once more the years accrued, the shadows seeming to curl and char him like paper in a fire. He was, in moments, an old man, seventy, a veteran of the wars, a shell of fled memories. (p. 222).

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He spoke with old-fashioned grandiloquence, a slight, struggling pause before each utterance. I got the impression he’d once had a terrible stutter, and was so good at speaking for the same reason great writers are so good at writing—because speaking had always been the thing most difficult for him. (p. 228).

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“The whole letter?” Daniel interrupted with surprise. “You can remember the whole letter after all these years?”
“I can’t read,” Amos replied. “Just as the captain’s eloquence derived from his stutter, my memory, especially of words, derives from my helplessness in this regard. More often it’s shame, not talent, that makes us remarkable, Daniel.” (p. 250).

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"The man ended up becoming this woman’s lover, and was so for three years before he realized that his desire had never been for her but for the particular tenor and music of her grief. “‘There’s a warning in this, my friend,’ he concluded, ‘but I’m half drunk and half in love with her myself.’" (p. 252).
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"I had come to wonder if the greatest thing our father had ever done for us, at least for our imaginations, was to die." (p. 278).
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"The night sky was so beautiful, the clouds like sundering ice around the surfacing moon. He looked down, the whole city spread out before him, all those bridges brightly spanning the Thames. It seemed so naive, filled him with a strange, deep joy. London, his city, so innocent he wanted to cry for it. He felt completely calm." (p. 353).
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[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me this book had a weak plot, it never fully developed and left so many questions unanswered, that I was a bit frustrated trying to make connections between the characters and the stories unfolding. That being said, I loved the characters, they were so well written I could picture them and understand their emotions through the very tense scenarios described and I actually cared about them. The pacing was good and it kept me intrigued throughout, I just would have liked some of my questions answered by the conclusion.

[Kendra Sanseverino · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don't know what to make of this book. Very likable and credible main character and the author deals with him in a humane and almost tender way. However, the book seems to want too much, there are so many loose ends and the stories and encounters with Amos are a little too weird for me and too much of a distraction from the main characters inner journey, to my taste at least.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 3rd Naeem Murr novel that I've read, and like "The Boy," this has an ending that leaves you wanting a discussion group to help you figure out what really happened. Despite the somewhat elusive resolution, I really liked this novel. Murr is one of the few novelists I've found who make me pause and re-read a sentence, in order to really appreciate the beauty of his imagery and prose. And this novel has the same dark, moody, almost menacing tone of his other 2 novels, which I liked.

So, while I may have an ulterior motive in recommending this novel (help! what really happened?), I really did enjoy it and hope that others will as well.

[Joseph Gowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written, great moodiness and melancholy, and likeable characters that do mean things to each other. I only wish it had ended better, so I could give it five stars. I don't like books to trail off. That is what real life is for. Stories are supposed to have a well-defined stopping point.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Tower Hamlets, my old stomping ground. This started off as one kind of book and turned into a very different book. I liked it!

[Leah Cripps · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contained some beautiful prose however the thread of the story at times was a little shambolic and hard to follow. 3.5 stars

[Kate]

Not what I was expecting but surprisingly good.