The Sea by John Banville

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The narrative moves back and forth in time, from the near past to the very distant past as Morden picks on selective threads of memory to ruminate at length, drawing astonishing conclusions at times. He realizes that his parents were mere fixtures in the scene of his growth:

Their unhappiness was one of the constants of my earliest years, a high, unceasing buzz just beyond hearing. I did not hate them. I loved them, probably. Only they were in my way, obscuring my view of the future. In time I would be able to see right through them, my transparent parents.

Oh, Ma, how little I understood you, thinking how little you understood.

Morden, though seemingly well on appearance, suffers from intense internal conflict as he tries to understand, perhaps review, life and its meaning for him.

But then, at what moment, of all our moments, is life not utterly, utterly changed, until the final, most momentous change of all?

As a little boy, that eventful summer in Ballyless, Max develops a strong crush for the alluring Mrs.Grace, but discovers a few weeks later that his love has swiftly shifted from mother to daughter:

Love, as we call it, has a fickle tendency to transfer itself, by a heartless, sidewise shift, from one bright object to a brighter, in the most inappropriate of circumstances.

Morden is supposed to be spending his time in Ballyless coping with loss as well as working on a monograph of the painter Pierre Bonnard. On his reflective journey, Morden draws in segments of Bonnard's life and compares it to his last few months with Anna.
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