After John Banville won the Booker for The Sea, he modestly said that it was about time a work of art won the award. Having just finished it, I’m sad to say I can’t deliver the snark, because he may just be right. Maybe The Believer will have me.

Of course, one man’s art is another’s relentless whining, and because we have no linear narrative structure, no likeable protagonist and no relief from long descriptive passages, you might find this pretentious and bloated, even at 195 pages. I occasionally did. That said, the last thirty pages close a novel more powerfully than any I’ve read in ages. You have to wade through a ponderous middle, in which our recently widowed narrator, a self-described art dilettante, weaves back and forth between self-pity and reminiscences from his seaside childhood holidays. After his wife’s death, he returns to that ocean town, and the memories pour fast, fragmented and furious. It all comes together at the end, and whether that’s enough to forgive our narrator for the endless moaning about his plight and the human race will be the test of your patience and generosity. The prose, however, may be without peer. To simply luxuriate in the man’s language is a pleasure, but don't expect Hemingway. Let the adjectives fly where they may, and let the plot sit comfortably on the shelf.