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Sea Level
" Sea Level is a rich, masterful novel about the hazards of romantic love, the complicated tapestry of filial love, the meaning of work, and the self-delusion and hypocrisies that make the world go round. King's setting is the wide world - Pakistan, England, Polynesia, a suburb of Washington - and the vast spaces of the human heart. I thought of Grahan Greene and Philip Roth too." (Elizabeth Benedict, author of "Almaost.")
The New York Times Book “This beautifully worked novel is told from the vantage point of a man who has reached... the ends of the earth.”
The New "(In) this fully conceived novel…one senses the impressive breadth and depth of Mr. King’s intelligence.”
Andrea Barrett, (National Book Award winner for "Ship Fever.") ... an astonishing and masterful novel...By turns fierce, darkly comic, and tender, 'Sea Level' illuminates the world we live in now."
Brett Lott (author of "Jewel," an Oprah choice): "...an elegant and richly woven novel, a work at once exotic and mannered, calm and ravenous. Roger King is a terrific writer."
Richard Selzer (author of "Mortal Lessons"): "...unique and powerful, immensely touching."
Chicago Herald "Pithy and Intelligent."
Eric Kraft (author of "Herb 'n Lorna"): "A vivid, richly detailed, immensely satisfying novel."
Flap copy summary from original Hardback (Poseidon, Simon and Schuster);
Sea Level is a brilliant and profoundly affecting novel about a man in mid-life struggling to come to terms with his father’s death, the women in his life, and the pain and puzzle of human existence. Moving with extraordinary skill and beauty across continents, between past and present, from inner reality to outer event, it is the story of Bill Bender, a sensual, troubled, imperfect man, and his fraying connections to the people he loves, his work as an international do-gooder, and his London past.
From Pakistan to Polynesia, his drama is enacted against a fascinating international background with a powerfully realized cast of characters. Among them are Han, Bender’s fiercely amoral Chinese lover, a woman of great erotic power; Akira, his eccentric Japanese colleague, crazed by whisky and his inability to comprehend the doublespeak of foreign aid; the elderly, ailing Mr. Yamada, embodying impenetrable cultural mysteries; and Bender’s father, a self-effacing London milkman of limited horizons, whose death shakes him in ways that surprise him, and in whom he comes uneasily to recognize a reflection of himself.
More praise for "Sea Level":
Charlie Smith (author of "Crystal River") “Roger King is a novelist of great range and depth. There is a stirring, pure compassion in his work, and a stubborn pursuit of the heart‘s mysteries. He rushes through an exotic damaged world, to arrive at the unexplainable silences within each of us. He has made a rich beautiful book.”
Kirkus “Ambitious and intelligent.”
Publishers “Elegaic and intelligent.”
Rosellen Brown (author of "Civil Wars") “What I love best about Roger King’s novel is that it’s the work of a sophisticated man who’s lived in the world…He knows things, this writer, and they’re not things you learn in the library, about men and women and sons and fathers. Sea Level is subtle, painful and resonantly real.”
The New York Times Book “This beautifully worked novel is told from the vantage point of a man who has reached... the ends of the earth.”
The New "(In) this fully conceived novel…one senses the impressive breadth and depth of Mr. King’s intelligence.”
Andrea Barrett, (National Book Award winner for "Ship Fever.") ... an astonishing and masterful novel...By turns fierce, darkly comic, and tender, 'Sea Level' illuminates the world we live in now."
Brett Lott (author of "Jewel," an Oprah choice): "...an elegant and richly woven novel, a work at once exotic and mannered, calm and ravenous. Roger King is a terrific writer."
Richard Selzer (author of "Mortal Lessons"): "...unique and powerful, immensely touching."
Chicago Herald "Pithy and Intelligent."
Eric Kraft (author of "Herb 'n Lorna"): "A vivid, richly detailed, immensely satisfying novel."
Flap copy summary from original Hardback (Poseidon, Simon and Schuster);
Sea Level is a brilliant and profoundly affecting novel about a man in mid-life struggling to come to terms with his father’s death, the women in his life, and the pain and puzzle of human existence. Moving with extraordinary skill and beauty across continents, between past and present, from inner reality to outer event, it is the story of Bill Bender, a sensual, troubled, imperfect man, and his fraying connections to the people he loves, his work as an international do-gooder, and his London past.
From Pakistan to Polynesia, his drama is enacted against a fascinating international background with a powerfully realized cast of characters. Among them are Han, Bender’s fiercely amoral Chinese lover, a woman of great erotic power; Akira, his eccentric Japanese colleague, crazed by whisky and his inability to comprehend the doublespeak of foreign aid; the elderly, ailing Mr. Yamada, embodying impenetrable cultural mysteries; and Bender’s father, a self-effacing London milkman of limited horizons, whose death shakes him in ways that surprise him, and in whom he comes uneasily to recognize a reflection of himself.
More praise for "Sea Level":
Charlie Smith (author of "Crystal River") “Roger King is a novelist of great range and depth. There is a stirring, pure compassion in his work, and a stubborn pursuit of the heart‘s mysteries. He rushes through an exotic damaged world, to arrive at the unexplainable silences within each of us. He has made a rich beautiful book.”
Kirkus “Ambitious and intelligent.”
Publishers “Elegaic and intelligent.”
Rosellen Brown (author of "Civil Wars") “What I love best about Roger King’s novel is that it’s the work of a sophisticated man who’s lived in the world…He knows things, this writer, and they’re not things you learn in the library, about men and women and sons and fathers. Sea Level is subtle, painful and resonantly real.”
203 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1992
1 person is currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Roger King
13 books25 followersBorn on the northern border of London. Dad worked in a factory making lightbulbs, Mum was a bookkeeper. Happy enough.
Went to universities in UK and US, ending up with a doctorate in agricultural economics
Pursued career in "international development" concurrent with writing fiction. First novel was "Horizontal Hotel," set in Nigeria, after a spell teaching rural development at Ahmadu Bello University in that country.
http://rogerking.org/novels/horizonta...
Second novel, "Written on a Strangers Map" followed work in Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia, and drew on the experience of becoming more personally and politically involved in these countries than was appropriate for a UN employee.
http://rogerking.org/novels/written-o...
Went on to work for UN agencies in twenty countries in Asia and Africa, before falling chronically ill with ME disease at 44. At the time he was a new professor of creative writing in the US, and had just completed the novel "Sea Level," which drew on multiple visits to Pakistan and Polynesia.
http://rogerking.org/novels/sea-level/
The prizewinning novel, "A Girl From Zanzibar," was published in 2002. His script of this book is perpetually on the brink of being made into a feature film.
http://rogerking.org/novels/a-girl-fr...
He executive produced, with Mira Nair, the feature documentary,"Still the Children Are Here," (2004) set in Megalaya, northeast India.
http://rogerking.org/film-more/
His autobiographical novel, "Love and Fatigue in America," about the experience of making a new life in the US while disabled by illness, was published in 2012.
http://rogerking.org/novels/love-and-...
He has won prizes for fiction and screenwriting, and received numerous fellowships, including those at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, VCCA, and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. He was a recent visiting fellow at Amherst College.
His work has been glowingly reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and points south.
His books have not made him rich.
The jagged trajectory of his personal life can be deduced from reading his novels, allowing for imaginative misdirection. Looks colorful; felt painful.
He lives in Leverett Massachusetts with Django the canine cover model, and tries to spend time on sailing boats, purely for health reasons.
Finds coffee therapeutic
Is working a new novel.
Earlier novels soon to be republished.
Went to universities in UK and US, ending up with a doctorate in agricultural economics
Pursued career in "international development" concurrent with writing fiction. First novel was "Horizontal Hotel," set in Nigeria, after a spell teaching rural development at Ahmadu Bello University in that country.
http://rogerking.org/novels/horizonta...
Second novel, "Written on a Strangers Map" followed work in Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia, and drew on the experience of becoming more personally and politically involved in these countries than was appropriate for a UN employee.
http://rogerking.org/novels/written-o...
Went on to work for UN agencies in twenty countries in Asia and Africa, before falling chronically ill with ME disease at 44. At the time he was a new professor of creative writing in the US, and had just completed the novel "Sea Level," which drew on multiple visits to Pakistan and Polynesia.
http://rogerking.org/novels/sea-level/
The prizewinning novel, "A Girl From Zanzibar," was published in 2002. His script of this book is perpetually on the brink of being made into a feature film.
http://rogerking.org/novels/a-girl-fr...
He executive produced, with Mira Nair, the feature documentary,"Still the Children Are Here," (2004) set in Megalaya, northeast India.
http://rogerking.org/film-more/
His autobiographical novel, "Love and Fatigue in America," about the experience of making a new life in the US while disabled by illness, was published in 2012.
http://rogerking.org/novels/love-and-...
He has won prizes for fiction and screenwriting, and received numerous fellowships, including those at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, VCCA, and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. He was a recent visiting fellow at Amherst College.
His work has been glowingly reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and points south.
His books have not made him rich.
The jagged trajectory of his personal life can be deduced from reading his novels, allowing for imaginative misdirection. Looks colorful; felt painful.
He lives in Leverett Massachusetts with Django the canine cover model, and tries to spend time on sailing boats, purely for health reasons.
Finds coffee therapeutic
Is working a new novel.
Earlier novels soon to be republished.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 20, 2014
I wanted to give this book one star but it was well written so the two. However the story was of no interest . I for one am not interested in the life of a World Bank worker and his memory of his father. The book could have been so much more interesting if it had been more about the father. A very fun milkman with benefits.
Displaying 1 of 1 review